


Listen To The Color Of Your Dreams

by StillTryingToFly



Series: How Four and Seven Learn To Love Themselves And Stop The Apocalypse [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dave lives, Drug Use, F/F, Fix-It, Good Brother Klaus Hargreeves, Good Sister Vanya Hargreeves, Graphic Violence, Gun Violence, Happy Ending, Jewish Dave (Umbrella Academy), Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, M/M, Pansexual Klaus Hargreeves, Podfic Welcome, Sibling Bonding, Time Travel, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Vanya Hargreeves is a lesbian, Vanya discovers her powers, Vietnam War, and are figuring shit out, its taking place in a war zone people, klaus and vanya have time traveled to the vietnam war, please read the tags, sorry I don't make the rules - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-01-15 20:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18506119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StillTryingToFly/pseuds/StillTryingToFly
Summary: Part Two of How Four and Seven Learn to Love Themselves and Stop the Apocalypse. Set in a reality where Hazel kidnapped Klaus and Vanya the night the Academy was attacked and so both Klaus and Vanya have traveled to the Vietnam War. What will happen to Vanya now that she's off her medicine and without Leonard to drip poison in her ears? And how will Klaus be different with one of his siblings with him in Vietnam? Please read part one if you want this to make sense.





	1. What was that?

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick preface to the actual story. Please read the notes at the end.

**March 3rd, 1968**

In the wake of retreat of the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong guerrillas, the US Army 173rd Airborne Brigade was stationed on the south bank of the Perfume river, amidst the rubble of what used to be a residential area, awaiting orders.

Klaus Hargreeves brought a joint to his lips with shaking fingers and only managed to take one hit before Vanya snatched it away from him and stuck it between her lips and inhaled like her life depended on it. The two of them were huddled together against the small section of wall that was still standing. The rest of the unit was milling around, cutting quick glances towards Vanya before looking away again quickly.

Jones was twitchy, wide brown eyes darting around wildly, fingers flying over vest pockets looking for something to fiddle with. He was the youngest person here, had been drafted less than a month past his eighteenth birthday and was not yet nineteen. He finally found a crumpled cigarette in his back pocket and immediately stuck it in his mouth and reached for his lighter.

“So, uh…are, are we going to talk about this?”

Everyone else, who had been watching Vanya while pretending not to look at her, turned to Jones. He waved his hand to encompass Vanya’s hunched form.

“I mean, seriously, what the hell? Are we really going to pretend we didn’t just see what we all saw!?

Klaus glanced over to Vanya with a wild fearful look in his eyes. Vanya brought the blunt to her lips again and answered on the exhale.

“It’s kind of a long story.”


	2. Along the Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief chapter before our protagonists make it to Hue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I’ve been gone so long; work has been far busier than anticipated and I had a health scare that turned out to be nothing but put me off writing for a while. I’m back now and ready to give my babies angst with a happy ending.

**January 31st, 1968**

**Ten Miles South of Hue**

 

**Vanya**

The transport bus had jolted and bounced along the road to Hue for hours as Vanya tried her best to figure out what to do next. Part of her wanted to drop everything else and figure out how to use the briefcase to get home, but understanding the code was going to take days at a minimum and they were definitely going to get to the fighting in Hue before she made any real headway. So instead she turned to the rifles she and Klaus had grabbed earlier in the chaos of leaving base...wherever that had been.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste, the M16 might be the standard service rifle for this time period but she’d never liked it. She remembered from weapons training as a child that it had an unfortunate habit of jamming at inopportune moments. With any luck they would at least have the updated A1 version, but she had forgotten the differences between the two and couldn’t tell which one she was currently holding.

Sighing deeply she started going through the gear she and Klaus had grabbed in the mad scramble earlier. At least she’d managed to grab ammo for the damn thing, Klaus had only grabbed one cartridge along with some C-rations and a canteen. Oh well, it would have to do. With any luck they wouldn’t be here for more than a few days.

As covertly as she could she walked Klaus through the steps of loading the rifle. Klaus took a few repetitions before he had it down smoothly.

“Do you,” Klaus licked his lips nervously. “Do you think we’ll be stuck here long?”

Vanya had a feeling that wasn’t really the question Klaus wanted to ask but she decided to answer it at face value.

“Probably a while. I don’t want to screw this up Klaus, if we open it without understanding how to operate it we could end up literally anywhere and god only knows what’ll happen to the others if we can’t get back to them.”

Vanya thought briefly about Hazel and Cha-Cha going back to the Academy to take revenge on her siblings for the theft of the briefcase and quickly cut herself off from that particular train of thought; she refused to be stuck in the past only days after her time traveling brother had clawed his way back to them. Oh god, he’d been telling her the truth about the apocalypse and she had completely dismissed him, just like the others had done to _her_ for her entire childhood. It was just another thing she was going to have to apologize for when she got back.

The Briefcase (it's a time travel device; it deserved the capital letters) was a little bit thicker than a standard briefcase, made with plain black leather, a simple black handle, and silver buckles that look ordinary at first glance but have strange dials around the edges. Vanya looks at the current placement of the dials and narrows her eyes, Klaus hadn’t turned the dials before he’d popped the clasps open and they’d been set this way before they left so she knew at the very least this combinations brought them to Vietnam 1968, if she could figure out how it designated that she could get them back home in 2019. Hopefully.

She looked up to fill Klaus in on her plans when she caught sight of Dave once again claiming a seat near her brother and is looking at him with such a tender expression on his face that she was momentarily taken aback.

Klaus had always had a vibrant personality that drew people in even when he was being an asshole. It wasn’t really a surprise that someone had taken a shine to Klaus. What was surprising was that this guy was looking at Klaus with a gentleness that shone through on his features. Her brother was beautiful, lust she could explain away; gentleness wasn’t something Klaus usually inspired in strangers.

What the hell did this guy want with her brother?

**Dave**

On his first day of kindergarten David Katz had wanted more than anything in the world to meet his best friend. He had four older sisters and they had all met their best friends at school so it seemed only logical to five year old Dave that he would meet his best friend there too. He hadn’t.

Oh don’t get him wrong, he was well liked if not wildly popular, he had friends, people he got along well with and could talk about baseball with, but he never really felt close with any of his classmates. Realizing he was homosexual at fifteen made him wonder if that was why he’d never been able to connect with his classmate beyond the superficial level. He decided that in the end it didn’t matter _why_ , what mattered was that he didn’t have anyone he trusted enough to be wholly himself in their presence.

And that was _fine_. He spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to convince both himself and his mother that ‘Really Mama, I’m doing just fine on my own, I don’t need a girlfriend, please don’t set me up with the new neighbor’s niece.’ But it was all good, really. If he was meant to end up with someone they would appear in his life.

In the army it was much the same as it had been growing up; Dave was easy to get along with as long as you weren’t a complete asshole and the other guys seemed to respect that. A couple of the Midwestern boys had never met a Jewish person in their entire life but once past their initial surprise it wasn’t really brought up again.  So Dave had figured that was it, his job for the foreseeable future was to survive Vietnam long enough to get home and be the best uncle to his sisters kids as he could possibly be.

He had never been the praying sort, he had always felt it was too much like begging, and he always figured that G-d had a plan for him and thing would happen when they were meant to whether he begged or not. He was still afraid to die here, and he still wanted a friend, but worrying over it wouldn’t do him any good.

And so he had passed his time in the Army waiting for his tour to be up so he could go home. He cleaned his gun, ate the food, and marched where they told him to. He had focused on going through the motions and was doing quite well until two people had appeared out of a flash of blue light out of thin air at his feet. Dave figured that was the most direct sign he could possibly have asked for. He wasn’t sure where they had really come from but it was clear to Dave that whoever they were it was important that he stick close by.

**Klaus**

Klaus Hargreeves had been kidnapped, tortured, and miraculously set free. He had used his powers without being totally overwhelmed for the first time in over a decade and managed to send himself and his sister almost fifty years into the past with one badly thought out decision. None of these things were as surprising as how quickly Klaus could feel himself relaxing around Dave.

His siblings might think that Klaus was the most carefree of all of them, but as Vanya had explained in her book, they didn’t actually know each other very well. He was a homeless junkie and a sometimes sex worker. He wasn’t carefree, he was despondent and miserable and despite this, savvy enough to survive on the streets where no one except for Ben cared whether he lived or died. He covered up his depression with dark humor and a jovial air; acting blasé and haughty in the face of social workers and group therapists.

He wasn’t the type to melt at honeyed words and a pretty face, and yet Klaus could feel himself relaxing as Dave took a seat by him and Vanya again. There was something weirdly soothing about his presence, his wide reassuring smile and easy demeanor seemed to pull Klaus in.

“You two doin’ alright?”

Jesus, even this guy’s voice was relaxing. Who the hell was this guy?

“We’re fine,” Vanya said sharply, her voice normally whisper quiet was now pitched low and frustrated as she fiddled with the briefcase in her lap.

Dave only smiled easily in the face of her brisk dismissal.

“First fight in country is always intense. You’re scared witless but it’s the best adrenaline high you’ve ever had. Just keep your head down and don’t do anything too stupid and you might get out of this alive.”

Vanya looked ready to reply scathingly when an explosion shook the entire bus and the call came up from all around them.

**“AMBUSH!”**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short chapter today but there will be more to come. If you want hear me scream into the void I’m the-rainbow-spoon-incident2 on tumblr. I might start posting sneak peeks of upcoming chapters soon.


	3. War is War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four and Seven adjust to being in a war zone...it goes better than you'd think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read the tags people, I mean it when I say this is in many ways a war story. No matter your feelings on the American military in general or the Vietnam war in particular there were certain things it couldn’t write around. In canon Klaus was a soldier, and in this story so is Vanya. I’m not going to get gory with the details but there will be mentions of death by violence, so if you don’t want to read that this might not be the story for you.  
> Also, it’s not going to come up a lot in this arc of the story but--all this Anti-Luther bullshit that’s swirling around the fandom? Not my thing. He’s not my favorite but I do at the very least have some degree of empathy for him. He was abused as a child, look up the term “golden child” in regards to abusive parents. It's fine if you don’t like him; you are allowed to not like things. But if your reason for not liking him is solely “He hurt the others with his decisions”...oh boy do I have some news for you about the six other assholes with the same last name.  
> In conclusion, there will be no Luther bashing here. Only second chances; they all deserve that much.

**February 5th, 1968**

**Hue, Vietnam**

**Vanya**

Vanya considered her current predicament as she walked slowly through the explosion damaged neighborhood they were meant to be clearing of VCs. _It could be worse._ She and Klaus had been in Vietnam for five days, five hellish, terrifying days and Vanya felt ready to explode. If it hadn't been for Klaus she might have done so already, but it helped to have someone to try and keep it together for.

She’d been worried at first about keeping her clumsy addict brother alive in the middle of a war zone (it was a uncharitable thought to have, and she did feel a little guilty for having it, but she’d _been_ there for the physical training and she knew damn well Klaus ran with all the coordination and grace of a baby giraffe). Considering the alternative was being alone here she truly was grateful for his company-their shared secret of time travel between them kept them close- and he was better at keeping his head down than she ever would have guessed.

But then, there was a lot about Klaus she didn’t really know. He’d been sweet as a child, turning biting and sarcastic as a teenager and mean as a snake after Ben had died, and that had really been it for them. She’d left the academy and hadn’t seen him for years and then wrote a book about their strange shared but separate childhood. She’d remembered best that angry wounded version of her brother, and that's mostly how she'd written about him. She had been surprised to find traces of the sweet boy underneath the biting humor and the years of drug use.

That was another thing she hadn't considered, she’d never really thought about Klaus’s drug use; it was just another one of Number Four’s quirks. He loved wearing flamboyant clothes, he was a wild joker, he did drugs. That was just how he was. She never really thought about _why_ he did these things, or what he’d learned by doing these thing, never once considered how any of them might be affecting him beyond his powers. Nothing like accidental time travel to make you rethink all of your previously held assumptions in life. _I’ve gotten sidetracked, where were we? Ah yes, drugs._

If she’d been worried about finding illicit drugs in an active combat zone, those fears had been put to rest less than twelve hours after she’d landed in 1968, when apropos of nothing, a private had offered her some pot for the C-ration she was too jittery to consider eating.

Drugs were easy to get here and Klaus was even more adept than her at finding sketchy people to buy sketchy things from. However she wouldn’t have believed that getting suppressants was ridiculously easy; the army actually gave suppressants to combatants to help with stress. All she’d had to do was ask.

Five days of bloody, messy, room by room fighting in Hue and Vanya was still having a hard time believing this was real. Everything felt so surreal, but she wasn’t bouncing wildly between the highs and lows of her emotions like she’d feared, cushioned by the lower dose of the meds that had been tossed to her by the CO with the order to “TAKE THE GODDAMN THINGS AND DON’T YOU DARE LOSE YOUR SHIT ON MY WATCH BOY!” So while it was a dire situation it could be worse.

That’s not to say that things were going _well_.

They were still in the past without a clear way home, and even if they _could_ get home there were time traveling assassins Hazel and Cha-Cha, as well as the looming threat of an apocalypse to contend with. However, they did in theory have the ability go return only hours after they had left so they weren’t really losing time here. So bad situation certainly, but it could definitely be worse.

Just as she had come to that conclusion, a man in a NVA uniform turned the corner ahead of her. Before she’d gotten sucked into the past she’d only ever fired at paper targets. Humans were a lot squishier, and killing them was a lot messier than she would have expected if she had ever stopped to wonder. She hadn’t as a child, and as an adult she hadn’t been thinking about a mess when she’d first killed someone, only how she hadn’t wanted to die. She was trying very hard not to think about him now, or any of the other people she’d shot; she didn’t want to kill anyone, she just wanted to live long enough to go home.

The first time she’d killed someone Klaus had reacted worse than she had, flinching hard and pulling back from her.

“Christ on a cracker V, when did you become a freaking fast drawing cowboy?”

Vanya only lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug numb with shock that she'd actually managed to get the drop on someone.

“Between music practice and school work. No one else was really interested in guns; dad didn’t mind if I practiced with them.”

Klaus winced but said nothing else, he’d heard what she’d left unsaid. _It was a niche I was trying to fill just in case dad ever let me join you all._ What they’d done as children seemed so much less important now. She wanted to get back to the others, she missed them. It was ridiculous, she hadn’t seen any of them in over ten years and suddenly _now_ she was missing them? It was totally without logic, but it was true.

She missed Luther; he’d been quite the artist as a child, she wondered if he’d kept it up as an adult. She hadn’t asked, why hadn’t she asked? She’d seen all of Alison’s movies, even the small ones from the start of her career and had been so proud of her sister when she watched them. She hadn't told Alison that. She had missed Five like a limb had been cleaved off when he disappeared and as soon as he was back home she’d dismissed and hurt him badly. She even missed Diego, who still lashed out with anger and harsh words when he was feeling vulnerable or upset. As teenagers they’d shared a love of music for a few precious years, and now she wanted so badly to be able to apologize to him for sharing what she’d written with the world. She’d needed to write it; she shouldn’t have published it.

She gave herself a little shake. All the things she’d wished she’d said kept swirling around her head, her emotions were much closer to the surface than she was used to, and even sounds here felt louder than back home. It was all very distracting and she needed to focus.

**Klaus**

Klaus Hargreeves hadn’t been the most devout student of history (chemistry had been his area of expertise) but he was pretty sure Pogo had glossed over the rampant illicit drug problem in the army during the Vietnam war. Getting drugs here wasn’t just easy, it was hard _not_ to be offered drugs. Heroin, LSD, marijuana, mushrooms and cocaine were all available if you knew who to ask.

Vanya’s suppressants were even easier. Vanya had planned on quitting cold turkey but all Klaus had to do was nose around the other soldiers a little bit to find that Sergeant Polansky was only too happy to throw, literally throw, suppressants at Vanya’s head with orders to take what she needed. Whenever they had time Klaus made sure to offer her some of the pot he’d managed to score to help her relax.

They’d been stuck in the Vietnam war for over a week now and the longer they stayed the less like herself she became. They army issued suppressants were a lower dose than the anxiety meds that she was used to taking (and what did that say about what she was used to taking) but instead of retreating into her shell as she’d done as a child or becoming fragile liked she’d become as an adult, she grew more assertive by the day. It was actually a little unnerving to watch. _Who knew war could make people so hostile?_

Quitting cold turkey with anything was dangerous. Going cold turkey on a drug that had been a constant since childhood could be catastrophic. So Klaus made sure Vanya rationed out her pills carefully, just in case they were found out before they could jump home; the last thing she needed was to have an episode here. But V didn't act like she was approaching a meltdown, she just seemed to be loosening up. She'd even laughed the other day when he'd made a joke about Diego's vigilante get up looking like fetish gear.

Drug use aside it was disturbing how well he and Vanya had slipped into this war without anyone besides Dave noticing. Because even though he hadn’t said anything Dave had definitely noticed them. But even with all their fucked up neuroses and weird habits no one really spared them a second glance. Everyone was trying so hard not to get killed to notice the two newbies they’d picked up.

If Ben were here Klaus was sure he’d be giving him a lecture about doing drugs while people were shooting at him, and Klaus would argue back that when you’re being shot at was a terrible time to be going cold turkey with mood altering drugs, so really he was being the responsible one here Benjamin. _Oh god, he missed Ben._

He kept looking around for Ben out of habit. Ben had been a ghostly constant in his life since he was a teenager nagging and snarling at Klaus's bad life choices. He kept waiting for his brother's judging concern every time he popped a pill. It never came.

But Vanya was there, quietly stressed and going through her own shit, but still supportive of him. It had been a nice surprise.

Dave had been something of a surprise too. When he’d overheard him and Vanya discussing who was the most likely to have drugs in their group Dave had just turned to them and said to avoid taking acid cause the last thing they needed was to have a bad trip during a firefight and instead go with grass or some anxiety meds.

Really, he was an angel of a man, Klaus could kiss him. Not just because of the drugs thing, but his quiet understanding thing. Dave would to listen to Klaus talk when they weren’t ACTIVELY ENGAGING THE ENEMY and Klaus couldn’t remember the last time anyone had enjoyed listening to him babble on about everything under the sun. He was pretty sure Dave didn’t understand half of what Klaus was saying but at least he listened with enthusiasm dammit! And Klaus knew he was really paying attention because he would agree with a good point, or ask a question when Klaus was being vague, and...and it was nice.

When their unit was busy being shot at they were taking shelter in the university where the civilians of Hue had been evacuated to. He and Vanya and Dave would keep close together, Dave listening as Vanya worked out possible codes on scraps of paper to try and get them home, away from what apparently used to be one of the country’s most beautiful cities.

It was hard to tell know, all bombed and shot up and littered with bodies as it was now. According to Vanya several thousand people would die in the fighting over the next few weeks and most of civilians would have their homes destroyed by the time the siege was over. Klaus could see some of them, terrified wailing ghosts at the edge of his vision and wondered why anyone had thought what this country needed was American interference.


	4. And Hell is Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave ponders his two very strange friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kept rewriting this but I was never thrilled with the result. Please tell me in the comments if you hate it, if no one else is happy either I'll just rewrite it again.

**March 3rd, 1968**

**Hue, Vietnam**

**Dave**

Dave Katz liked to think that he was a reasonable human being. Not the sort of person to believe in old fashioned superstitions or in fairy tales or the lies made up to sell trashy magazines.

That being said, six weeks before he had watched his new friends fall out of thin air with flash of blue lightning looking as surprised by their surrounding as Dave had been by their appearance. It was hard not believe something strange was at work when you considered their method of arrival in Vietnam. But the question remained, _who were they, and why were they here?_ So far Dave had a few theories but nothing really held up to further scrutiny.

 **CIA operatives** : _unlikely; the company trained their operatives to blend in and Klaus and Van didn’t blend at all._

 **KGB operatives** : _very unlikely; the Russians weren’t going to send an operative going through withdrawal into the field with only a towel and a jacket._

 **Escaped medical experiments** : _possibly; they both spoke English but their understanding of slang was spotty at best and neither of them knew much about what was happening stateside._

 **Aliens** : _at this point_ _it was as likely as anything else._

Wherever they had come from, Dave knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the two of them hadn’t meant to end up here. For all that Van was a crack shot and Klaus would stare off into the distance for a minute and then know exactly how many NVA’s there were hiding around the next pile of rubble they clearly didn’t belong here. They were just... _so weird_.

They used some slang like cool and groovy but for the most part they either sounded like his ma when she tried to imitate the way his sisters spoke, or they used words he had never heard of before. For all they were clearly used to getting blitzed they were surprised by how readily available drugs were. They spoke with flat American accents but only had the most generalized notion of politics stateside, let alone in country. Once when Dave had mentioned Westmoreland, Klaus had looked confused and said “Who?” Even VC’s living under a literal rock knew who Westmoreland was.

It had taken a few days hanging around them to realize that Klaus and Van were siblings. It wasn’t until Klaus had started a story with ‘Remember that one time dad left for a week and we all gorged ourselves on donuts and got kicked out of the bowling alley for being too wild?’

In the limited downtime they had between being shot at, they could usually be found sitting together in some corner of the university telling stories or playing cards. And the stories they told made no sense, they talked about “The Academy” a good deal but from the way they talked about the school it sounded like their siblings were the only students.

Van tended to be reserved and quiet, trying not to be noticed, trying not to have her presence questioned as she worked out equations on scraps of paper but it was clear she loved it when Klaus would tell stories. Even if most of his stories bordered on the ridiculous and rest just sounded like tall tales meant to impress drunken friends. But, they did make Van smile as she scribbled out her equations, sometime she even broke in with a question or two. Like now for instance.

“I thought it was Ben who helped you steal a pair of mom’s shoes?”

“No!” Klaus flapped the question away wildly laughing as he did so. “It was darling Five’s doing actually, he was lookout for me while I _borrowed them_ . _Borrowed_ sister dear because I always intended to give them back...eventually. Anyway I practiced in my room for awhile and it was going really well and I wanted to show off to Allison that I could walk in higher heels than her, when I tripped and fell down the stairs and broke my jaw.

Dave flinched at that last part but, Van was just smiling fondly apparently not even noticing Klaus’s sister slip, and she’d set her equations down on her lap and was looking at Klaus for clarification.  

“But it was Five who helped you?”

“Yeah,” Klaus nodded eagerly. “He could tell I was upset that Allison was allowed to have pretty shoes for the shoot and I wasn’t so he helped me borrow mom’s.”

Dave wasn’t sure where to _start_ with that story. Borrowing their mom’s heels at twelve? He knew from their previous tales from their childhood that their pop was a abusive sonofabitch but they’d never really talked about a mom before, what was _she_ like? Also what the hell had their home life been like if they could both remember an instance where Klaus had broken his jaw with fond smiles? Also, and perhaps most bafflingly of all...

“Who’s...Five?”

Klaus and Vanya freeze as if they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t have been. Their eyes flick toward each other in a moment of brief shared panic before Van speaks.

“He’s our brother.”

“Oh, okay.”

Their dad was a dick, they _did_ have a mom, a sister named Allison, and they have at least two brothers named Ben, and...Five. Oh, there were five children!

“Is it a nickname? Five, cuz he’s the youngest of the five of you?”

There is a moment of silence before they both burst out laughing. Van at least tries to be dignified about it covering her mouth to suppress the laughter bubbling out of her, but Klaus makes no such attempt. He had flopped onto his back and there were tears leaking out of his eyes and before long his breath is coming in wheezing gasps.

“Oh god, can you imagine if the little psycho heard that? Oh god he’d hate it so much!” Klaus positively crowed with delight. Beside him Van giggled into her hand and for a moment Dave thought she might be crying too; as she turned her head to look at Dave her eyes looked cloudy and white, but then she blinked and it was gone.

“Especially now, oh god he’s such a cute teenager. _We_ weren’t that cute,” she gestured at herself and Klaus. “But Five always was deceptively adorable.”

“Oh please V,” Klaus waved a hand dismissively in front of him. “Don’t be defeatist; you were cute as a button as a child, if you hadn’t always been hiding behind your bangs the rest of the world would have seen it too.”

Dave considered what they had said, as well as what they hadn’t.

“So...not the youngest then?”

Van and Klaus shared a look, Van did something complicated with her eyebrows and Klaus just shrugged before Van turned back to him.

“We’re not sure exactly how old he is; we were all adopted but Five’s situation is a bit complicated and we don’t know how old he is exactly, but he does _look_ like a teenager. He’s called Five because he chose to be called Five; when mom offered to give him a name he said he didn’t like it.”

Suddenly Van’s lips pressed together as if remembering something painful.

“Besides,” she continued with a shake of her head. “There were seven of us, not five.”

Seven kids? Dave, who had been born almost ten years after the twins, couldn’t imagine having that many kids in one house at the same time. By the time he had turned nine years old all of his sisters had either been married or had gone to school far away so he had grown up as a pseudo only child constantly looking for a playmate despite having four older sisters.

“Were the rest of you close in age then?”

“Oh yeah,” Klaus said nodding vigorously. “In fact,” he continued with a devilish grin, “Van and I are exactly the same age.”

Dave considered that. “Are you related?”

Klaus shrugged. “We’re not twins if that’s what you mean. We were just born the same day and adopted by a lunatic.”

_Sure why not?_

And so Dave had let it go. He hadn’t asked the thousands of questions that had been swirling around his head because he could tell that either they wouldn’t be able to answer him or they would answer him and he would wish they hadn’t. So they passed time by playing cards and telling stories, wild outrageous stories that made the siblings smile that left Dave baffled but amused.

And so Dave knew that there was something very strange about the Hargreeves siblings. They’d fallen into his life in a strange way and they’d been strange every moment they stayed in it and Dave couldn’t help but be happy, because for the first time in his life he finally seemed to fit with someone. Dave was pretty sure he’d been falling in love with Klaus for weeks, but it wasn’t just him, it was Van too.

When he’d come to them in the middle of February as Van tried to cover up the fact that she was on her monthly, he’d quietly slipped her some rags and said, “It’s okay, I’ve known since you got here. I’m not going to tell anyone.”

And Van had just looked at him with such surprise and fragile hope it had almost broken his heart. She’d expected to be dismissed and ignored, just like Klaus. What kind of hell had they both lived through that they both expected such terrible treatment from the people around them? Sure, they both had issues, but he figured anyone who had grown up with a father like the one they had described would be a little screwy. But all things considered they weren’t even close to being the most fucked up people in the army, let alone the country. So Dave had shelved his theories and his questions and decided it didn’t really matter, when everything finally came out into the light.

 

* * *

 

 

The day had started off so well; there had been a rumor circulating that the North Vietnamese army had finally given their troops permission to retreat from Hue and from the look of things the rumor was true. As they’d made their way through the bombed out suburb south of the Perfume river they hadn’t encountered any VC’s or booby traps.

Klaus and Jones had walked on ahead and were sweeping the area where the ground rose up into a large pile of rubble had been shoved against a concrete wall that was half demolished. Van and Dave were twenty paces behind them and the rest of the unit not far off when Klaus’s head suddenly jerked around to look at empty air to his left with wide frightened eyes.

Afterwards Dave would think about how everything that happened, happened in less than twenty seconds but at the time it had felt like time had slowed to a cawl. In less time than it takes to blink the helmeted head of a Viet Cong popped up from the rubble and aimed a rifle at Klaus and Jones. Dave didn’t even have time to panic before the first shots rang out.

Klaus and Jones both went down and Dave felt a terrible sense of dread wash over him, but it was Van’s anguished scream that made every hair on Dave’s arms stand on end.

A furious wordless scream that unnerved Dave even as he raised his own gun to take aim at the person who had shot Klaus when a huge gust of wind swept up from Van’s upraised empty hands. Her rifle was slung across her chest and her face was contorted with rage and her eyes were terrifyingly brilliantly white.

With a scream so terrible it made Dave want to cover his ears Van brought her hands forward in a slashing motion her hands in tight claws and if Dave hadn’t been there to see it himself he wouldn’t have believed that her scream became a solid coursing thing that wrapped around the Viet Cong and threw him against the wall hard enough to smash his skull open on the concrete.

As soon as his head made a sickening splat against the wall Van stopped screaming and her arms fell in time with the dead man’s body. Her eyes were brown again, a lovely rich brown that reminded Dave of whiskey, and wide with shock.

“Christ on a cracker Vanya! What the hell was _that_?!”

“Klaus,” she whispered and both she and Dave turned to the pile of rubble where Klaus was trying to get up and look at his sister at the same time. Half a second later he and Van were running full tilt toward the pile.

“KLAUS!” Van’s chest was heaving and her helmet had blown off in the wind leaving her hair wild and falling out of its braid but she didn’t even stop to pick up her helmet just made a mad dash up the rubble to pull him to her chest.

Dave grabbed Klaus’s shoulder so hard his own knuckles turned white, but he had to see for himself that Klaus was uninjured.

“Oh god I thought you’d been killed and I was going to have to go home alone!” Van was patting him down wildly looking for a bullet hole that wasn’t there, growing more frantic as she spoke, her breath coming in quick little pants.

“Uh, V? Not to ruin this moment of sibling bonding but uh...did you through that guy against the wall with your voice? Cuz, I...I’m pretty sure I saw you kill that guy with your voice.”

“Oh, um...I thinks so. It was...I didn’t even think. I was just so angry and...and then he was dead.”

Both Hargreeves were silent for a moment as they clung to each other’s arms.

“Did--did I really do that Klaus? Did I kill someone with my voice?”

Klaus looked nonplussed. “Yeah, you sure did V. I guess dad was wrong about you being ordinary after all, huh?”

Van let out a startled laugh that quickly dissolved into manic giggles. Suddenly she stopped and turned her head to look at something behind Dave. He spun around quickly to see what she was looking at.

The rest of the 173rd Airborne Division stood behind them looking with varying levels of disbelief on their faces.

_Oh, perfect._


	5. And Of The Two, War is Worse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...I'm not dead. This chapter kind of kicked my ass and I've been really busy with work recently. I also published the first chapter of another fic, so if you've liked this one so far go check out "A Place We Could Escape To". I probably won't update it again until after I've finished this series, but you never know. Anyway comment and tell me what you thought, as comments literally keep me going most days when writing gets hard.

**March 3rd, 1968**

**Hue, Vietnam**

**Raine**

When Lieutenant Ethan Raine (Aquarius, secret opera lover, desperately wishing someone else was the ranking officer of this shit show) had been nine years old he had tried to hide a stray puppy from his mother. It was the one thing in all the world he had wanted and had been so afraid his mom would say no, that he hadn’t asked for permission first. He’d done alright for the first twenty-four hours before she had caught on. It had taken literally begging on his knees and crying to get his mom to let him keep the dog. Watching the Sky Soldiers standing in front of Klaus and Vaughn Hargreeves was giving Raine the strangest sense of kinship with his mother.

Raine had joined the army partly out of family tradition and partly out of a love for his country as much as a sense of duty to help fight for it. The reality of warfare in Vietnam felt nothing like what his father and uncles had told him about their experiences fighting Nazis and fascists in Europe and it had left him feeling wrong footed and uncertain. 

 _This_ wasn’t the war he had been expecting, and there was little here that felt right. While he cared deeply for his men he had little faith in the stateside bureaucrats that made decisions over the people on the ground. Commanding a war they only ever seen in pictures was dangerously stupid. So it was his men he thought of when he made decisions, not a congressman he’d likely never meet.

Raine regarded the Hargreeves brothers--siblings, whatever--as they passed a joint back and forth. He supposed it was bad form; you were supposed to at least _pretend_ not to be doing illegal drugs where your superiors could see you, but Vaughn was apparently a woman...with superpowers...who had joined his platoon for some incomprehensible reason, it was hardly the biggest rule they were breaking.

Like he didn’t have enough to deal with already, now there were superpowered ladies showing up from nowhere, and throwing VC’s against walls with their noise powers.

Soldiers showing up with little to no warning wasn’t that unusual on a normal day, and with the chaos of Tet Raine hadn’t been too concerned with the finer details of his newest soldiers.

The past six weeks had been a total clusterfuck, and yeah it was a little embarrassing to only _now_ be realizing that one: there was no record of either Hargreeves sibling in the army and two: Vaughn was a woman.

Raine was not under the illusion that many of his men wanted to be here. Sure you could argue that more of the Sky Soldiers were volunteers than draft, but he doubted that anyone had wanted to end up in fighting like this, so why oh why did he have superpowered women popping up out of nowhere to join his platoon? _WHY?!_

Wondering about it was getting him nowhere, so he turned his focus on the tiny woman currently smoking a blunt like her sanity depended on it.

“What _are_ you?”

Raine was willing to bet cash money that there was some fucked up CIA conspiracy going on here and his men were caught up in it, and that shit just would not stand.

Klaus grimaced before replying.

“We’re human, we were just sort of...” he waved vaguely with his left hand before snatching the joint. “Experimented on to see how far humanity could be pushed.”

Raine turn his focus on Klaus.

“And what can you do? Shoot lightning from your fingers? Read minds? Shapeshift?”

Klaus looked at Raine with a flat expression.

“I see dead people,” he deadpanned.

_-I’m sorry, pun totally intended here-_

“Come again?”

_Surely he’d heard that wrong._

“Dead people, lots of them. All over the goddamn place.”

Klaus gestured broadly with both of his hands and continued. 

“Most of them are pretty fucking angry about dying in this shitty fucking war, let me tell you, but Sammy has been pretty helpful. He always checks what coming our way. He’s probably the nicest ghost I’ve ever met. And yes V, I’m counting Ben in that. Ben is as much of an asshole as the rest of us.”

 _Dead people. The tall skinny one sees dead people. Sees poor Sammy Mitchell who was shot through the neck three days before Tet. This is fine. Who the fuck is Ben? Who cares? Everything is_ **_fine_ ** _._

“How did you two even get here?” Raine asked for lack of a better question.

The Hargreeves glanced at each other, Klaus doing something ridiculous with his eyebrows as Vaughn shrugged.

“Would you believe it was sort of an accident?”

_An accident?_

Raine felt his eyelid twitching.

_You know what, he was probably better off not knowing._

“Sure. An accident. Why not? Just to be clear,” Raine began, wishing fervently that he wasn’t clear on what was going on. “You and your brother are...science experiments with superhuman abilities who were just wandering around through Vietnam, and happened to end up at our base just as we were getting orders to leave for Hue?”

Vaughn shared a look with her brother before turning back to Raine. 

“That actually sums it up really well,” she says, sounding almost hysterical. 

The very thought of the paperwork required to report something like this was giving Raine a headache and it was still sitting in some rear echelon mother fucker’s desk. He didn’t get paid enough to deal with this. It was so far outside his job description it wasn’t even funny.  His job was to lead his men once the choppers dropped them in some terrible valley or a miserable hill by the jungle somewhere and they would hump it until they got shot at and then they would shoot back at enemies they couldn’t see. His job was to kill as many enemy soldiers as possible while losing as few of his own men in the process, all for the sake of a fucked up numbers game nobody really gave a good goddamn about.

As far as Raine could tell the Hargreeves were here because they had no choice in the matter, but were following orders and fighting well. The guys in the platoon had grown fond of the two during the past six weeks. Klaus’s stories were always a hoot and Vaughn was a great shot and a great listener. Whether the brass liked it or not the Sky Soldiers had adopted the Hargreeves. 

Fine. **_Fine._ ** If Vaughn-Van?- wanted to be here, she and her freaky noise powers and her weirdo brother were welcome, more power to them.

“You are going to need papers if you plan on hanging around much longer,” he said before turning around and walking away.

“Too much goddamn paperwork,” he hissed under his breath as he navigated the piles of rubble.

**Vanya**

Vanya Hargreeves was ordinary. That was the truth that had ruled her life from her earliest memory. Her siblings were all extraordinary, and she was not. She knew this the way even blind people know the sky is blue and the grass is green. It was, to borrow a phrase, a truth universally acknowledged.

So how was this possible? How had she killed a man she’d thought responsible for killing her brother using nothing but her mind?

Immediately after her little display they’d had bigger problems; they’d been _noticed_. The one thing they were trying to avoid and she’d brought unnecessary attention down on their heads. But nothing bad had happened. No one was angry that they had lied or kept secrets, they were worried about what was going to happen to her. 

Vanya said little as the men around her relaxed and started joking again. They had been tense with concern while Raine had grilled her and Klaus, worried about what would happen to them. She couldn’t really remember anyone but her siblings being worried about what would happen to her, and even then it was mostly out of a sense of obligation. But the platoon had been afraid that she and Klaus were going to get in trouble. 

Perhaps even more surprising than the concern for her well-being was the fact that the Sky Soldiers actually wanted her around. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone wanted her around.

Well, except maybe Leonard. Vanya felt her lips twitch into a small smile at the thought of her new (maybe) friend. He was so easy to be around, and he hadn’t made her feel like a failure or an idiot or a burden. That alone was feat none of her siblings had ever really managed to achieve, not even Five. Leonard had made her feel special, made her feel like it was okay that she wasn’t extraordinary like her siblings.

Except, apparently she _was_ extraordinary. She had power inside of her and it was scary how easy it had been to reach inside herself and found the rage that became energy when she told it to kill the soldier.

The energy, so hungry to do her bidding, hadn’t been there before. Where had it _come from_ , so eager to throw someone against a wall at her whim. Why had _that_ felt familiar?

She’d known what to do, she realized suddenly. She hadn’t even thought about it but her mind remembered how to grab the object and throw it away.

 _You can do a lot more than that_ , a sweet voice whispered in the back of her mind. _Don’t you remember?_

Slowly, in the back of her mind, a memory stirred. The training room in the east wing of the Academy had unpainted plaster walls free of any decoration or ornamentation. Vanya had been  in that room watching Two practice his aim and Five perfect his jumps. But _she_ had to go to that room to train too, and she didn’t like it. It was hard to make the noises do what father wanted it to. The noises wanted to flow, it didn’t want to pick things up and move them and focusing on the one noise in the middle of the racket her siblings always made was too hard and Seven didn’t want to do it.

Vanya came back to herself with a gasp. 

_What the hell was that?_

Dad had tested them as infants and she had never showed any signs of extraordinary abilities at all. Why would he have made undertake training for powers he didn’t think she had?

 _He wouldn’t_ , she realized suddenly. He had known all along that she had powers and had _lied to her about it._

Now that she’d found one memory another floated to the surface eagerly.

She could remember sitting at the breakfast table, the feeling of the stiff wooden seat under her, her tiny legs not long enough to reach the floor, the scratchy woolen dress, the bland tasteless oatmeal in front of her on the table, no more appealing now that it was too cool to burn her tongue sat untouched. 

There was a nanny in the kitchen with her. Vanya knew this woman was _her_ nanny even though she couldn’t recall ever seeing her before. 

She was trying to coax Seven into eating the nasty bland sticky oatmeal that felt like glue in her mouth. The woman started to sing, some French song that Seven didn’t really like, but more than the song, Seven could hear the kettle behind them reaching a boiling point, letting off its high pitched shriek. 

 _Just like training_ the little girl thought. _There is a noise I can make into action like father told me to._ And just like that, nanny was gone. 

Twenty-five years later the woman that little girl grew to be started to cry.

**Klaus**

Klaus Hargreeves had seen more weird shit by the time he turned sixteen than most people see in their entire lives. Ignoring the zombie robot armies, statues with laser eyes, and that one time the Eiffel Tower achieved flight, his siblings were usually the cause of the weird shit. During their shared time as the most dysfunctional group of people to ever have their own action figures, Klaus had seen his siblings, numbers One through Six, do things that gave him nightmares for decades. 

Vanya had always been the exception; tiny ordinary boring Vanya with her violin and her shy glances had never done anything all that interesting or unexpected until she had written a book detailing her shitty childhood. And it wasn’t until the two of them had been pitched headfirst into one of the bloodiest conflicts of the Vietnam War and Vanya had turned out to be as ruthless as Diego when push came to shove and far better with a gun than Klaus ever would have guessed.

Finding out that Vanya actually did have powers, kill a grown man with her voice kind of powers, was pretty much on theme with the shit that was being thrown at him recently. Even in a literal war zone one of his siblings was still the most dangerous thing there. Go fucking figure.

At the very least he now had an answer to the mystery of Vanya’s lack of powers, it had always kind of bothered him. Part of him had been jealous but mostly he found it weird, they were all born the same way, what were the odds that only Vanya didn’t have powers?

Ben had once suggested that maybe she _did_ have powers but they were so subtle she didn’t even know. Maybe her powers affected the way she saw or heard the world or something equally harmless and she wasn’t really affected by her powers like the rest of them. Ding dong! They were wrong! Vanya was very much extraordinary, that much was very clear, but why had she never had them before now?

Suddenly it was very clear to Klaus that while he had been intentionally dulling his powers for years with drugs, Vanya had been doing the same thing for even longer on accident.

Klaus had been so sure the two of them were going to have to beat a hasty retreat via the Briefcase, but Raine had just looked so _done_ with everything, and had only said to try not to die until they had ID.

“Too much goddamn paperwork,” the man had muttered before turning around and heading back the way he’d come.

Everyone else had started to relax as soon as Raine had finished speaking and were now breaking into smaller groups to await marching orders. Dave had gently shepherded him and Vanya off to one side. Still close enough to see and hear everyone but with enough distance to feel private. Vanya looked shocked, her eyes vacant like she was seeing something a million miles away before she suddenly pulled in on herself and started crying quietly. 

Trying not to panic, Klaus pulled her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her in a slightly dusty sweaty hug.

“Your meds,” Klaus whispered into the crown of Vanya’s head. “You’ve taken downers since forever, they probably affected your powers. So when dad tested you, you could access them.

There was a brief pause before Vanya shook her head. 

“I don’t think so. I think I’m the reason dad built Mom. I think I killed a nanny, Klaus.”

She looked up at him with wide terrified eyes.

_Oh, that’s not good._

“What are you talking about V?”

“Its all blurry but I remember not wanting to eat the oatmeal and the nanny trying to charm me by singing some French song and--and there was a kettle on the stove and it was so loud, it was all I could hear and then--then the nanny was gone. _Oh god._ Klaus I think I was a murderer by the time I was four.”

Vanya started crying even harder.

Startled Klaus patted the top of her head.

_Shit! Think of something nice to say!_

“Well, the rest of us were only a couple years behind you.”

Vanya started whimpering.

_Fuck._

“Even dad knew I was a monster! He gave me those drugs to keep me from hurting the rest of you!”

Alarm bells rang in Klaus’s head. It was a truth he’d accepted long ago that everything dad did was evil, so if the old goatfucker had drugged Vanya _intentionally_ it was clearly an evil decision. Before Klaus could communicate this to his sister however Dave broke in.

“Bullshit.”

Both Hargreeves siblings turned to look at him.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I call bullshit. Children learn empathy and correct behavior from their parents and if the only person in your life was a cold hearted sonofabitch it's no wonder you didn’t know hurting your nanny was wrong. Were you _told_ it was bad to hurt her, and not to do it again?”

Vanya thought about it for a moment.

“No,” she said hesitantly. “I don’t _think_ so, anyway. I remember him standing there frowning at me going _‘Number Seven’_ in that disapproving way of his but he--he never told it was _wrong_.”

Dave looked triumphant. “Well there you go! You weren’t taught proper morals until you were older, and most four year olds throw temper tantrums, you were just a four year old with super powers.”

Klaus could have kissed him.

Vanya didn’t look convinced.

“But I _killed_ someone Dave. That woman is dead because of what I did to her!”

Dave nodded with a very sober expression.

“She is dead, but I would argue that it is the fault of a man who treated his children as weapons and never bothered to teach them that actions have consequences, and hurting people is wrong.”

Dave sighed deeply, and brushed the worst of the dust off a flat piece of rubble behind them and gestured for them to sit down. Vanya rubbed at her eyes before sitting gingerly next to Dave.

“Do you remember meaning to hurt her Vanya?”

Vanya was silent for a moment before she answered.

“No,” she mumbled without meeting Dave’s eyes.

“I...I think I was trying to copy what I did in training? He always rewarded me if I made the things in training go away, and--and I just wanted her to go away; I didn’t want to eat the oatmeal.”

Klaus’s memories of childhood were blurry the way they are if you spend a large portion of your formative years taking drugs, but he did vaguely recall Vanya having a few different nannies before dad had built Mom for them. 

 _Oh shit_ , now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure Vanya had like four nannies in a row leave suddenly and without explanation when they were very little.

The really disturbing part of Klaus’s revelation was that it sounded exactly like something Reginald would do. Instead of teaching Vanya restraint he just built something she couldn’t kill. _Oh god no wonder we’re all so fucked up._

Vanya had apparently found a different avenue of thought.

“I was so jealous of you all because dad called you special, and paid attention to you. But you all were just lab rats to him! I can’t believe I ever wanted to have powers! He would have made me hurt you all with them, I just know it!”

Not an unreasonable conclusion Klaus figured. If Diego was being punished dad would make either him or Ben stand in front of the target to make sure Diego was motivated to do well.

But that didn’t make any sense, that dad had taken away Vanya’s powers. Why would he? The Umbrella Academy was meant to be a monument to the man’s towering ego, why would he handicap one of its members? Unless...

“I don’t think he was afraid you would hurt us,” Klaus started slowly. “You always adored being around the rest of us, you loved us. He was afraid you wouldn’t do what _he_ wanted you to do.”

Vanya was shaking her head so Klaus hurried on.

“No really, think about it V! He was super strict about me doing drugs until I straight up told him I didn’t care about saving people, and I didn’t want to be a hero. As soon as it was clear I wasn’t going to be a good little soldier anymore, what did it matter if I fucked up my powers? They weren’t really under his control anymore anyway so might as well stop spending so much energy trying to stop number Four from being a fuck up!”

“You’re not a fuck up Klaus,” Vanya said quietly. 

Klaus waved dismissively.

“Sure I am!”

“No! I mean, yes, you’re damaged and you definitely need therapy, but you’re not a fuck up Klaus.”

“That’s sweet of you to lie V, but we both know I’m fucked up in the head.”

Vanya and Dave both frowned in disagreement at that but could tell now wasn’t really the time to argue with Klaus about it.

They were quiet for a moment before Dave broke the silence.

“What’s with the numbers?”

Klaus shrugged and answered with his usual amount of tact.

“Well we didn’t have names until we were ten years old, dad just numbered us.”

Dave blinked. Opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again.

“You two,” he started slowly. “Need so much fucking therapy.”


	6. Like Real People Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus and Vanya begin to thrive in their new environment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got so long and tedious I split it up into two chapters so be on the lookout for the next one in the next week or two. As always please comment, even if it is only to keyboard smash or say you liked it. I am the-rainbow-spoon-incident2 on Tumblr if you want to watch me scream into the void.

**The A Shau Valley**

**May, 1968**

**Klaus**

Once he was past the initial shock of time traveling fifty years into the past and finding out that his tiny sister was so powerful that dad had been afraid of her by the time she was four, the most surprising thing for Klaus about the current situation was how much he was enjoying himself living and fighting in the Vietnam War. Living in the A Shau Valley in 1968 should have been an unmitigated hellscape, but it wasn’t. 

Oh sure, the whole country was choc-a-bloc with ghosts, but Klaus was hardly the only person who spoke to people only he could see, so even before the Sky Soldiers knew he could talk to dead people he hadn’t stood out in that regard. And yes he was being shot at, but that was something he had gotten used to in his life in general. 

It was the company that made life here better than it had been back in his own time period. The Sky Soldiers were becoming the best friends he had ever had (not that he had much to compare them to), he was becoming close to his sister for the first time in his entire life, and best of all there was Dave. Dave who never made Klaus feel bad about himself or his poor life choices, only safe and accepted. It was a very new feeling for Klaus.

Being part of a group was far easier here than it had ever been back home, probably because the people here liked him and no one here expected him to give up using drugs. Heroin was the choice for many a soldier here but Klaus steered clear, it had only ever made his powers more volatile rather than dulling them. But the pot here was something most soldiers indulged in at least once, it being the 60’s after all, and while Vanya was weaning herself off suppressants Klaus had started taking them. Because hey, if they helped dull her powers they might do something similar with his own, and he figured it was worth a shot.

After Tet their orders were to return to the base in the A Shau Valley where Vanya and Klaus had first appeared. They hadn’t been sent far from base in the entire time they’d been back from Hue. The farthest they had gone was a small collection of villages less than fifteen miles away, to look for evidence of Viet Cong collaboration with the villagers.

Nobody liked this arrangement. 

Klaus hated being stared at by the villagers like at any moment he was going to rush them and kill them without warning. To be fair to them this was a genuine concern these people had. According to Vanya’s spotty recollection of history there was a horrific massacre at a village called My Lai that was preceded by hundreds of rapes of women and children. Apparently the whole thing was hushed up by military command and wasn’t going to break in the American news circuit for almost two years. My Lai was more than a hundred miles away from where they were now but it was hardly the only case of a serviceman attacking or raping a villager and not being held accountable for it. 

Just as the Americans had no way of distinguishing a Viet Cong guerrilla from a civilian, the villagers had no way of knowing which soldier would be indifferent and which would attack without provocation. For the soldiers there was the constant threat of stepping on a land mine and losing a leg or just plain old blowing yourself up to contend with. It was clear that everyone involved preferred it when the Americans stayed on their base.

Base itself consisted mostly of tents and sheds that were called buildings and to a homeless semi recovering junkie it was actually pretty comfortable, more like rehab than anything else. Yes that was it, it was exactly like rehab except with lots of drugs which made the entire experience far more pleasant in Klaus’s opinion.

Raine had come through with some paperwork for both Hargreeves siblings, stating that they were members of the 173rd Airborne Division. Apparently all it took was a few weeks and one scatterbrained record keeper who owed Raine a favor and ta-da! Klaus and Vaughn Hargreeves were part of the U.S. army. They’d even been issued vests with their surname on them and they were being paid and everything.

Dave was quickly becoming Klaus’s favorite person in the whole world. He was hopeless at the  poker games the men liked to organize, but he was so good natured about it, laughing and saying he’d only really learned how to play Gin Rummy and Bridge so unless they wanted to play those games he’d just watch. And watch he did, usually pressed up against Klaus’s side as Klaus played poker. Klaus wasn’t that good either but Sammy was, and he liked kicking the collective asses of the rest of the platoon from beyond the grave. 

When Klaus wasn’t playing cards he would listen to Dave talk, talk about his sisters and their kids and how amazing they all were. He talked about his sister Eve who was a college professor, and Lena had three girls already in school and a fourth surprise baby on the way. Dave smiled so widely as he told them that Klaus thought his face might split open.

“I was a surprise baby too. I was born nine years after the twins, this little one will only have a six year age gap but they’ll still be the baby.”

“Oooh!” Vanya trilled from her seat on top of a mess table. “Are you the baby of your family Dave?”

Vanya was really coming into her own here. She’d never been very concerned with her clothes as a teenager, and as an adult she typically wore drab oversize clothes that made her melt into the background. Here she wore the same army fatigues as everyone else but they suited her surprisingly well despite her tiny frame. After Tet she’d lopped off several inches of her hair so that she had a chin length bob that she often tucked behind her ears. Most days she could be found with Murphy and Jones under whatever scrap of shade they’d been able to find arguing about rock music. 

Klaus hadn’t known that Vanya knew anything about rock music at all, but judging from the heated arguments that cropped up whenever they discussed musicians Klaus was beginning to see that Vanya had **Opinions** about rock music. And she knew how to play the guitar! Klaus had only ever heard her play the violin but apparently she and Diego had both learned to play guitar as teenagers before they had both moved out.

As soon as the guys found out she was a violinist Murphy had hunted down a violin for her. It wasn’t the same quality of instrument as she had back home and the wood was scratched in places and Vanya said it needed a proper tuning, but the strings were all intact and the bow was in reasonable condition so after that she would treat them to small concerts whenever they had the time. 

And maybe Klaus was a little biased but the music Vanya made in that muggy little valley was probably the most beautiful thing Klaus had ever heard in his life.

And her powers, geeze her powers were terrifying. She could slice through trees and undergrowth with a wave of sound with as little effort as it took Diego to throw a knife. And that was just the beginning; with the encouragement of the platoon she began to practice making things move around and float and she could also make a really impressive shield if she concentrated hard enough.

The longer they were in Vietnam the more Vanya became a real person, the drugs that had suppressed her powers had also suppressed most of her emotions as well. Without her pills to drag her down and with the encouragement of the platoon Vanya was able to make friends and build something that resembled self esteem for the first time in her life.

Without the constant fear that she was an unwanted burden to the people around her led to her being able to good naturedly tease those her friends. Having grown up with the girl that was too timid to call others out on their bullshit Klaus was incredibly proud of her growth.

Dave laughed at Vanya’s ribbing.

“Yep! I’m the baby alright! You better believe my sisters never let it go, even when I got taller than them. Especially when I got taller than them actually.”

“Well Vanya has always been the shortest!” Klaus heckled as he ruffled Vanya’s chin length hair, jumping away before she could smack him.

“It’s true V! Even Five is taller than you! And he’s like twelve.”

Vanya flipped him the bird and went back to her notebook where she’d started to compose small pieces of music as well as her time travel math.

Aside from Dave and Vanya, Klaus had cultivated a circle of friends that he played card games with in the downtime as well as a larger crowd that would listen to his (edited) stories of the Umbrella Academy. 

Four months after Klaus and Vanya had been pulled through time the platoon was getting some R&R. A whole week to do whatever they wanted in Saigon. Life was as close to perfect as it was likely to get for a Hargreeves child.

**A Shau Valley**

**Vanya**

Vanya Hargreeves liked to think she was a reasonable human being. She always did that little half jog when crossing the street so the cars wouldn’t have to wait too long to turn, she never played her violin past 9:30 at night, and she held the door open for the person behind her when entering a building. However it was quickly becoming apparent that when it came to music, there was only so much she was able to put up with.

“What the actual fuck are you smoking Murphy? Yellow Submarine is _not_ better than California Dreaming, it's not even better than Wild Thing. Its lyrics are asinine and the melody is so simplistic it might as well be a nursery rhyme.”

Sitting on the hard bench of a mess table she stared incredulously at Murphy. She could not quite believe she was actually having this conversation. There really was no accounting for taste. This whole conversation had started as a way to pass the time as Vanya and Murphy cleaned their rifles (not the updated version goddammit) and it had started going downhill as soon as Murphy had started waxing poetic about The Beatles. He said they were some of the best musicians ever to make music; she said they were decent composers, clever lyricists, and mediocre singers.

“You’re exaggerating!”

“I am not!”

Murphy turned around looking for support and his eyes landed on Jones huddled in the meager shade of the building he was leaning against.

“Jones! Back me up here!”

Jones didn’t even look up from his magazine.

“And get in Van’s line of fire? No thank you, I’ll stay right over here. Besides man, she’s right; Yellow Submarine is highly irritating if you aren’t stoned out of your mind or a toddler.”

Murphy gasped dramatically and clutched at his heart as if shot. He’d clearly been spending too much time with Klaus.

 “Ooh, that’s cold man, and totally untrue.”

_Speak of the devil._

Klaus sauntered around the corner of the hut  with Dave only half a step behind him, both of them looking cheerful as could be.

“Yellow Submarine is destined to be a classic, I can feel it in my bones.”

Vanya snorted derisively.

“No. Paint It Black is destined to be a classic, Klaus. Yellow Submarine is destined to be sung by children trying to irritate the adults around them, trust me.”

“Oh, you’re no fun anymore!”

Vanya flipped him the bird while Dave covered his mouth trying not to laugh. 

_Perfect, a tie breaker._

“Where do you stand on this Dave? Yellow Submarine, terrible or terribly good?”

Vanya raised her eyebrows in expectation as she leaned back against the table to get a better look at Dave.

He looked amused by the question.

“Can’t we enjoy terrible music if we want to?”

_Oh please, like you’re getting away with that non-answer cop out._

“Do you really want to listen to Yellow Submarine though? I mean really?”

Dave snorted.

“Not really, no.”

Klaus gasped dramatically and threw a hand over his forehead like he was about to faint.

“Et tu, Brute?”

Dave just smiled and gently knocked his shoulder against Klaus’s.

“I did like Strawberry Fields if it's any consolation.”

Klaus heaved a put upon sigh but Vanya watched a soft smile bloomed across her brother's face.

“Oh _fine,_ I guess that’s alright then.”

Dave laughed before continuing.

“If it makes you feel any better, we can find a jukebox while we’re in Saigon and you can listen to it as many times as you want.”

Jones’s head shot up so fast Vanya thought he might have given himself whiplash.

“Saigon? We’re getting R&R?”

“Yep!” Klaus said lips popping on the last letter. “A whole week of it in fact, Sammy was hanging out in the communications tent and came to tell me as soon as he heard. I danced a jig in celebration when he came to tell me. I suppose Raine will tell us officially tonight, so we must all look surprised.”

And how amazing was _that?_ Klaus casually mentioning speaking to ghosts, and no one looked at him like he was crazy or making it up. He still smoked pot and popped tranquilizers every day, but his drug habit was so much closer to what it was when they were teenagers than what it had devolved into as they got older. He was able to keep most of the bad spirits at bay on his own most of the time and had made a friend in Sammy, who was apparently just happy to pass messages to his unit. Vanya was so fucking proud of Klaus.

“I wouldn’t call it a jig exactly,” Dave said with a distant look in his eyes, no doubt picturing whatever movement Klaus deigned to call dancing. “I’ve seen people performs jigs; that was more like a seizure you had while remaining upright.”

Klaus giggled, actually giggled. And Vanya could see why; if one of their siblings had something about Klaus’s dancing it would have felt different. There was always this undercurrent with their family; they were all competing for the affection of a man incapable of love, and it had lead to this festering sense that everything you ever did was being judged. But when Dave teased them it was obvious that it was meant with kindness. Judging from the stars in her brother’s eyes it had been taken that way too.

And just like that the realization hit her. Klaus was in love. Not just friends, not just lusting after Dave’s body, actually falling in **love with him** . _Oh fuck._

Vanya was pretty sure she had figured out how The Briefcase worked. Mostly sure. At least 93% sure. She hadn’t told Klaus yet because...well it was mostly because at first she’d been focused on practicing her powers. She had wanted to be able to control this new and dangerous part of herself before she went home and unleashed herself on the twenty-first century, and finding out she could send anything from people to boulders flying if she was in a bad mood was a little bit terrifying and a little bit exhilarating and a lot more than she had ever dared dream she might be capable of. 

The first time she practiced she’d gone into the woods alone, not wanting to accidentally kill anyone from the platoon like she’d killed the Viet Cong soldier or her nanny. At first the biggest problem she had was focusing on a single sound in the cacophony that was the jungle, but she found that the longer she went between doses the better her hearing became. A month after they left Hue she found she was able to pick out Klaus’s heartbeat no matter where he was on base or listen to her own and turn it into a concussive force.

Music actually helped a lot. After Murphy turned up a violin for her (she felt guilty when he admitted that a music student fleeing Hue had brought their violin with them and had traded it for rations and money) she found she could use the music to channel the energy and sound around her.

Without her medicine to dull everything, her playing itself had also improved. Remembering the conversation she and Helen had had in the bathroom before Vanya had been kidnapped and fallen through time Vanya wondered what the other woman would say about her playing if she could hear her playing now. 

So Vanya learned to control powers that had been taken from her, embraced her talent for music that she had been barred from accessing before, debated Rock and Roll with the generation that was responsible for the majority of the genre, and whenever she had time, tried to puzzle out how The Briefcase worked so she and Klaus could go home. The weeks passed and she felt more secure in her powers and her ability to control her emotions she found herself... having a good time.

Aside from actually having powers it was perhaps the most unexpected thing that had ever happened to her. Even after she had left the academy she had never been able to connect with people, though she supposes the mood flattening drugs might have been a factor in building healthy relationships with other people. So for the first time in her life she was building relationships with people with actual access to her own emotions.

So maybe it was selfish, but a week ago when she figured how the dials most likely worked, she hadn’t immediately told Klaus; she’d been afraid that he’d want to go home immediately, and she wasn’t ready to go home yet. Now she wondered if Klaus was going to want to come back with her when she finally was.

The trip into Saigon was long and boring and Vanya spent most of it with her feet resting on The Briefcase wondering how she was going to tell Klaus she might be able to get them home.

She hadn’t even noticed that she’d started chewing on her lower lip when Dave reached over and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Are you alright Van?”

Dave’s brow was wrinkled in concern and Klaus was leaning across him with a look of concern on his own face.

Vanya pasted a weak smile on her face.

“I’m fine, just thinking about Saigon.”

“You look like you’re going to barf,” Klaus said scrunching his nose.

“I’m fine, really guys.”

“Are you sure?” Jones had turned around in his seat and was looking at Vanya with concern. “Because the last thing anyone wants is to be sick during R&R.” 

“I’ll be fine,” Vanya said firmly.

“That’s good,” said Murphy with a grin like the cat that caught the canary. “Because as soon as we get to Saigon we are getting tattoos.”

Vanya blinked.

“What?”

**Saigon**

**Vanya**

The buzz of the tattoo needle rang in Vanya’s ears impossibly loud and threatened to drown her in memories. Vanya Hargreeves had never gotten a tattoo before. As a child she’d watched as her siblings had tiny umbrellas inked onto their forearms, branding them as Reginald Hargreeves’ property. (At the time she hadn’t understood that, hadn’t considered how the tattoos made her siblings feel, had simply felt that this was just one more way for her siblings to leave her out of things.) As an adult she could never hear the buzz of a tattoo needle without thinking about watching her siblings from her vantage point on the landing. She had avoided getting tattoos her entire adult life because the sound reminded her of the crushing loneliness of her childhood.

She was therefore startled by the platoons insistence that she be included in getting the platoon logo on her upper arm. It had been Jones’ idea originally; he had wanted to get a tattoo to commemorate his first six months in country, but them Murphy had gotten wind of the idea and thought it was the perfect way for them all to spend a few precious hours of their first day of R&R.

The tattoo parlour was tiny and cramped and hot and Vanya could hardly see the walls for all the soldiers milling around the shop while Polanski sat for his tattoo. It was the best Vanya had felt in years.

Klaus had been as excited as a kid let loose in a candy store, flipping through the artist’s little cards of sample art asking Dave and Vanya what he should get besides the skull on his arm. 

Vanya had rolled her eyes when Klaus had pointed out a duck that was drawn with its butt thrust out saying he thought it was the perfect design for a tramp stamp.

Dave however took Klaus’s antics seriously and held up another card with a more elegant design.

“What about a tiger? You met us in the valley of the crouching beast after all. It could be a commemorative tat.”

That actually sounded really cool.

“What about you V?” Klaus said while looking for a suitable tiger for his shoulder. “You have to get something besides the skull.”

Vanya bit her lip.

“I was thinking,” she started slowly. “That I might get a treble clef and the opening notes to Phantom of the Opera.”

“Is Phantom of the Opera your favorite piece?” Dave asked flipping through yet another stack of cards.

“It is,” she said softly, remembering the last time she’d played that piece had been the night she learned her father was dead.

At the thought of Reginald Hargreeves anger coiled in her gut and the lamp above her head began to sway in a nonexistent breeze. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly willing her powers back under control.

“I suppose I’ll have to draw it myself,” she said brightly pretending that everything was fine. “So they know where to put the notes.”

“Sounds awesome Vanya,” Klaus said, his eyes following the still swaying light overhead. “Where’d you want to put it?”

“On my left arm,” she said cautiously watching Klaus for a reaction. “Where you have the Umbrella.”

Klaus stilled for a moment before he looked up at Vanya, a smile breaking out across his face.

“Good for you Vanya.”

When Polanski’s tattoo was done and it had been loosely bandaged Vanya stepped up.

“I’d like to go next if you don’t mind.”

Murphy bowed deeply at the waist and gestured her to sit in the chair as the rest of the platoon jostled for a good view.

The needle stung but not as badly as she’d been afraid it would. It felt more like scratching a mild sunburn with a fingernail than anything else and Vanya let out her breath in a whoosh and let the buzz roll over her.


	7. Honey, Sing It Strong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanya has a realization.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is non explicit sex mentioned in this chapter, I don't go into any details but if even the mention of sex makes you uncomfortable you have been warned. I almost wrote sex scenes but it would have made the chapter even more clunky and awkward than it already was so I may write it as a drabble on my Tumblr if enough of y'all are interested.

**May, 1968**

**Saigon, Vietnam**

**Vanya**

For a moment after she’d caught sight of herself in the mirror propped against the wall Vanya almost hadn’t recognized herself. In the months since she and Klaus had landed in Vietnam she’d spent much of her time outdoors in the sun getting tan around her tank tops and building more muscle than she’d ever had before. Factor in the haircut and the tattoos and Vanya wouldn’t be surprised if her own neighbors didn’t recognize her when she got back.

But it wasn’t her hair or her tan that was making her almost unrecognizable, it was the way she held her shoulders back and looked people in the eye. She was confident in herself and she was done taking crap from everyone.

Her tattoos were stinging slightly, throbbing with her pulse even after the needle had left her skin. She loved it. She loved the pain of it, the way she was now changed in a physical way that could never be undone. She was a different person than the Vanya who had been kidnapped in 2019 and it was validating to be able to see the evidence of that change in herself.

She took another deep breath and laughed with joy. If this is how getting tattoos always felt she could see all too easily how people could become tattoo addicts.

Smiling so widely her cheeks hurt she spun around to face Klaus.

“So did you finally decide where you want to put the tiger?”

 

* * *

 

Ten hours, four bars, and several drinks later Vanya Hargreeves was dancing like her life depended on it. She was dressed in the most garishly patterned long sleeve dress she had ever seen in her life, the cut of which would be real trouble on anyone taller than her, pink tights, enough eyeliner to make her feel like a raccoon, and a pair of white go-go boots.

Klaus had dragged her and Dave to the market district in Saigon to get clothes so they could go dancing in style and had immediately begun trying on the wildest clothes he could find and pouting when they didn’t fit his gangly legs.

He had been so pleased when he found the boldly patterned mini dress that Vanya wondered for a moment Klaus intended to buy it for himself before he spun in her direction and thrust it at her.

“Try it on, V! It’ll look so good on you!”

Vanya couldn’t help her laughter as Klaus herded her eagerly towards the tiny curtained corner of the stall that was meant to serve as a dressing room. Her brother was all flailing limbs and flapping hands and a bright happy smile. How could she say no to that?

Dave had managed to escape their shopping trip wearing khaki pants and a comfortable looking blue button up but Klaus looked like he had gotten dressed in the dark and between the two of them Vanya wasn’t sure which of them looked more ridiculous, her or Klaus. It felt glorious.

She was focusing on that bright happiness and stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the guilt that was bubbling away under the surface. Guilt on how she’d kept her progress secret from her brother because she wasn’t ready to leave, guilt that she was keeping her progress secret because she thought he might not be ready to leave, guilt over how she’d dismissed his pain all her life, just lots of guilt all around.

By the time they got to bar number four Vanya was feeling pleasantly floaty and loose-limbed as she danced. She’d normally feel embarrassed to dance in public, but here bad dancing seemed like the norm and she wasn’t nearly as ridiculous looking as either Klaus or Dave who managed to back into each other because they weren’t looking where they were going. 

“We’re heading to the bar,” Dave had leaned down and shouted to be heard over the music, gesturing to himself and Klaus so Vanya couldn’t miss who he was talking about. 

“I’m going to keep dancing! Go! I’ll catch up with you later!” 

That had been a while ago and Vanya was just starting to think that maybe she should drink some water if she didn’t want a killer headache the next morning when she noticed the absolute goddess dancing next to her.

She had a wild mane of dark curls, olive toned skin, cheekbones that could cut glass, and an imperious knifelike nose.

Vanya swallowed thickly. She was aware that most people looked tall compared to her, but this woman was a veritable giantess and Vanya’s first thought was: _I want to climb her like a tree._ Her second thought which came one second after the first was: _Oh, oh...that’s really gay!_

Vanya froze. She was almost thirty years old, had never dated anyone seriously because she had a hard time believing anyone would ever have any interest in ordinary boring Vanya so why bother trying? But she had dated men in the past, had never even thought about dating women, even though she’d always thought women were so much prettier than men. And now that she examined _that_ thought more closely, how the hell had she missed something as obvious as an attraction to women, for _thirty years?!_

Her mind suddenly flashed to the small white pills she’d taken every day for over twenty years and the pleasant buzz she’d had evaporated like water on hot pavement.

Reginald _Fucking_ Hargreeves. Was there an end to the ways he’d fucked them all over?

It wasn’t until the beautiful woman stumbled into Vanya that she realized she’d been making the ground around her shake with her fury.

“I’m so sorry!” Vanya blurted guiltily as she reached out to steady the woman before she could fall. 

“It's alright! Whatcha think that was? An earthquake? My daddy grew up in California, says they get ‘em all the time there!”

She was still grasping Vanya’s shoulders. 

_She smells nice. Oh god she’s way too close._

“You alright there hun? You look like a rabbit that knows its been spotted.”

_She felt like one._

“Just...startled. Are you alright?”

“Oh, I’m just fine shuga. I haven’t had any time off in approximately an eternity and I am going to enjoy tonight come hell or high water. You new?”

“No,” Vanya found herself startled into honesty. “I’ve been in country a few months. First time in Saigon though.”

The woman’s answering smile was like watching the sunrise, warm and intense and beautiful.

“Well you certainly know how to find a dive bar. Let me buy you a drink, an apology for almost knocking you over,” the woman offered flashing her blinding smile in Vanya’s direction.

“Uh, it--its okay,” Vanya stuttered. “It was my fault really.”

_It really had been too._

“Oh come on darlin’! Let me buy a pretty girl a drink if I feel like it.”

Vanya froze.

_Pretty?_

With no further resistance from Vanya the woman linked their arms together and headed for the bar.

“My name is Josephine by the way, but call me Jo.”

“Vanya,” she said feeling almost awestruck. “Call me Van.”

Jo’s answering smile made Vanya feel like a balloon had inflated itself inside her chest.

 

**Dave**

Dave Katz felt like he was floating, the beer and the shots from earlier not even coming close to the feeling of kissing Klaus Hargreeves.

Klaus filled his every sense the plushness of his lips against Dave’s, his short hair between Dave’s fingers, his soft moans, the smell of smoke and sweat and something Dave could never quite place, something that was entirely Klaus. Dave couldn’t get enough of him.

It helped that Klaus couldn’t seem to get enough of Dave either. Both of his hands were clinging to Dave as if he was afraid he would slip between his fingers if he wasn’t careful. After a long moment he pulled back and looked Dave in the eye.

“Want to head back to the hotel?” Klaus’s voice sounded absolutely wrecked with desire, and part of Dave wanted nothing more than to grab his hand and run with him all the way back to their motel but a tiny niggling responsibility bounced at the edges of his memory.

“Have to tell Van where we’re going, she’ll worry otherwise.”

Klaus pouted but turned and dragged Dave behind towards the bar. Dave was following so closely he collided with Klaus’s back when the other man stopped abruptly.

“Well it's about time!” Klaus muttered under his breath. 

Dave leaned around him to see what he was looking at and almost burst into hysterical giggles.

Vanya was sitting at the bar with veritable giantess and the two of them were busy trying to devour each other with their eyes.

“I don’t think she’s going to notice anything unless we set the place on fire as we leave.”

Dave snorted but managed to catch Van’s eye and wave a quick goodbye before pulling Klaus towards the exit.

“See,” he whispered into Klaus’s ear. “Was that really so hard?”

Klaus turned to smile at him.

“No, but I am.”

Dave guffawed. “That was terrible Klaus, who told you you could make puns like that?”

“My mommy, so shut up!”

Dave didn’t think anyone had ever told him to stop talking with such affection before and by the time he made it to his tiny motel room, talking was the last thing on his mind.

 

**Vanya**

They ended up going to Jo’s tiny apartment after they left the bar. As soon as the door closed behind her Vanya found herself being kissed breathless by Jo. Jo kept going until Vanya actually whimpered into her mouth.

“Sorry bout that,” Jo said, not sounding all that sorry. “I couldn’t help myself. I’ve been waiting to do that since I saw you dancing.”

Refusing to be outdone Vanya grabbed Jo by the back of her neck and pulled her in for a searing kiss pulling back only when she was short of breath.

“We are wearing _way_ too many clothes,” she gasped reaching for the hem of her dress.

Judging from how quickly Jo started shimmying out of her own clothes, the other woman completely agreed.

Vanya Hargreeves had never been a smoker, had never really been able to get past the smell of cigarettes to enjoy the burst of nicotine so many people found so addicting. But after a few months of being in 1968 had taught her to really appreciate pot in a way she had never anticipated. Everyone reacts to drugs differently and pot helped relax her without dulling access to her powers.

Sitting naked in bed with Jo, passing the bong back and forth was the sort of thing she never would have believed herself capable of doing a few short months ago. Hell, even a few weeks ago.

Sex with a woman had never crossed her mind as something she would do before, but before she would never have gotten a tattoo, or become friends with her siblings, or had powers. This knew Vanya did all of those things apparently, and she _liked_ them.

Jo set the bong down on the bedside table and turned to grin lazily at Vanya.

“Are you up for round two? Because I want to see how many times I can make you cum.”

Vanya felt a swooping sensation in her stomach. Oh she was _so_ ready.

 

* * *

 

Waking up next to her the next morning should have been awkward, but Jo just asked if Vanya wanted some breakfast or coffee before she left. Figuring she was going to need something before hunting Klaus down to tell him that she could get them back to 2019 Vanya accepted the offered cup of coffee. Vanya was about halfway through her cup when Jo spoke.

“Do you have family in the army?”

Vanya paused with the mug halfway to her lips.

“Yes...how did you guess?”

Jo smiled and waved vaguely towards Vanya’s shoulder.

“The tat. You aren’t the first nurse to come to Vietnam to be closer to family. I was doing shots of the 3rd Field Hospital a while ago and got to talking with some of the nurses. I even wrote a piece about them but no one would publish it.”

Vanya blinked in surprise. “You’re a reporter?”

Jo shrugged. “Freelance writer and photographer. Mostly photography though. I have a lot of opinions when I write that people would rather I didn’t give voice to. Photos are harder to dispute than words most of the time.”

Vanya looked around Jo’s tiny apartment and noticed for the first time the photos that dotted the walls. She stood to get a closer look. They were mostly portraits. Women hunched with age, their faces lined with wrinkles, small children playing in and alley, stall vendor’s with their wares displayed before them proudly; beautiful ordinary moments captured by Jo’s camera.

“They’re beautiful,” Vanya said as she turned back to Jo still sitting at the tiny rickety table shoved against the wall.

“Thanks,” Jo paused before continuing. “Would it be alright if I took one of you? Being a war correspondent gives you an up close and personal look at human tragedy so I try and find as much beauty as I can.”

Vanya blushed, she’d finger combed her bedhead and she was pretty sure her eyeliner was smudged but the way Jo looked at her made her think that maybe she could be beautiful.

“Okay, where do you want me?”

 

**Klaus**

Klaus Hargreeves woke to the sound of someone knocking on the door. At this particular moment he hated whoever it was, but he would have to find a clock before he could decide how _much_ he hated them.

“Go away!” He shouted over his shoulder and immediately dropped his head back down.

They knocked again and Klaus groaned into his pillow as Dave snuggled closer to him.

“Morning sleepyhead,” Dave whispered into Klaus’s ear.

Klaus’s morning was instantly looking up, now all he had to do was get whoever was knocking on his door to go away and maybe he and Dave could have some fabulous morning sex.

“Klaus? I need to talk to you, please can you come out here?”

Blinking in surprise Klaus pushed himself into a sitting position and started looking around for his pants.

“I’ll be out in a second Van, are you okay?” Because even through the door Klaus could hear the stress in her voice.

“Everything is fine, I just need to tell you something and I can’t do it through a door.”

Concern mounting Klaus  pulled on the trousers from last night and slipped into the hallway to find Vanya picking at her nail beds.

“What’s up sis?” Klaus asked trying to keep the mood light.

Vanya sighed deeply before speaking in a rush.

“Please don’t be mad; I think I figured out a week ago how to work the briefcase and I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t ready to go home yet, I’m still not ready to be honest but I felt terrible keeping this from you and I had to say something or I wouldn’t forgive myself.”

Vanya paused to peer hesitantly at her brother.

“Are you mad?”

Klaus just  blinked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like a bad mother only paying attention to one of my children. In my defense this chapter was like pulling teeth and I'm glad to finally be posting it. On that note I've also written more of my unrelated time travel fic "A Place We Could Escape To" and if you haven't read it yet please go check it out because its my baby and I love it. Anyway let me know in the comments what you think and if y'all want me to write the sex scenes on my Tumblr; if no one cares I'm probably not going to bother. My Tumblr is the-rainbow-spoon-incident2


	8. Mastering The Art of Stupid Decisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus tells Dave about the future.

They could go back. This thought kept bouncing around Klaus’s brain as he headed back into the motel room he and Dave shared. Klaus and Vanya could open the briefcase and leave behind this humid sweaty jungle filled with ghosts and soldiers and return to their own time. Return to their family and time traveling assassins and that impending Apocalypse Five had mentioned.  _ Dear god _ , Klaus did not want to go back. 

When Klaus walked back into the motel room he must have looked terrible because Dave hadn’t asked what Vanya had needed to talk about so urgently that she’d powered through her own hangover to talk to her brother about it as soon as she could. He had taken one look at Klaus and shelved the conversation for later and proceeded to kiss Klaus breathless.

I wasn’t that he and Vanya hadn’t fought, in fact Klaus was pathetically grateful that Vanya had kept her progress to herself. If she had come to him a week ago and announced she could get them home Klaus would have had to pretend he was ready to leave Dave behind and go back to 2019. 

Klaus was sure any therapist worth their salt would have a field day with the fact that Klaus was happier in the Vietnam War than he was in the city he grew up in. Which as far as Klaus was concerned was just another reason to avoid seeing a therapist.

Vanya had visibly relaxed when Klaus admitted he wanted to stay until Dave’s tour was up in December, and Klaus was comforted by the knowledge that he may be messed up, but at least he had company because Vanya didn’t want to go back yet either and she wasn’t even in love with anyone.

It was only after a rousing round of morning sex that Dave asked what the early morning interruption had been about.

“Two things,” Klaus said evasively laying face down on the bed trying to catch his breath. “The second thing was inviting us to go to lunch with her and Jo in a few hours.”

Dave’s brow furrowed. “Who’s Jo?”

The girl from last night apparently,” Klaus said picking at his nails to avoid meeting Dave’s eye.

Dave waited patiently before he spoke again.

“And the first thing she wanted to talk about?”

There was only one thing for it; before Klaus had had the luxury of lying by omission and lying to protect himself but if he wanted to be able to keep Dave he was going to have to be completely honest with him. But it was no big deal really; it wasn’t as if being honest with people had never blown up in his face before. Fuck his life honestly.

“Dave, what would you say if I told you that Vanya and I are time travelers from fifty years in the future?”

Dave raised his eyebrows in surprise but his voice was calm when he replied.

“I’d say that it makes more sense than my theory that you two are aliens on the run from a corrupt space bounty hunter.”

Klaus cocked his head to the right.

“That was your theory?”

“You two appeared in a flash of blue light like something outta Star Trek. What was I supposed to think?”

Klaus considered it. “That’s fair.”

“So, the future,” Dave said settling back against the headboard to look at Klaus. “What’s it like?”

And fuck Klaus sideways but Dave sounded so damn sincere.

“Terrible, according to my brother Five there’s an Apocalypse coming, but even ignoring that it’s still pretty shit.”

“Oh,” Dave said in a disappointed voice. “That sucks.”

Klaus hummed sympathetically.

“Yes, that’s why Vanya and I are going to hang out here until we’re ready to go back.”

“How does that work?” Dave asked curiously. “Can you only travel on certain days to other specific dates? Is there a cool ritual?”

Klaus looked up at him in open surprise.

“What?” Dave asked defensively.

“You...believe me?”

Dave frowned. “Of course I believe you Klaus, you wouldn’t lie to me about this. I trust you.”

Klaus swallowed thickly, it suddenly felt like he had a frog in his throat; Klaus was pretty sure no one had ever said those words to him in his entire life. Why would they? You’d have to be crazy to trust a junkie, and yet...Dave trusted  _ him, _ and that meant everything.

“So... I can buy that the future is shit, that’s not hard to believe, but I can’t buy that it’s so bad that you and Vanya said ‘hey, why don’t we take a quick vacation in Vietnam in 1968!’ and just popped your asses into my tent while wearing nothing but a towel and a trench coat.”

Klaus laughed a little hysterically. “Uh...no, no that was definitely an accident. My fault really; Vanya told me I shouldn’t be messing with something we’d stolen from those crazy assassins and then:  _ woosh! _ We were suddenly in the Vietnam War.”

“You stole a time machine from assassins?” Dave asked incredulously.

“Yep!” Klaus said while giving half-hearted jazz hands before he rolled over onto his back and schooched himself into a sitting position next to Dave.

“Huh.”

_ Dave was truly the master of understatement. _

“So,” Klaus continued nervously. “Here’s the thing: we might be able to go back, but as I have mentioned previously the future quite frankly sucks balls. Also: impending Apocalypse.”

“You did mention that,” Dave said faintly.

“So with all of that comes an important question: would you like to come back with us?”

Dave froze.

“If you say no,” Klaus hurried to assure. “Neither of us will think badly of you, Vanya will go back and help the others save the world and I--”

Klaus paused more nervous than he had ever been in his life.

“I’ll stay here with you, if you’ll have me.”

Dave opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and spoke in a voice with rising indignation.

“Are you telling me you two have had a way to get yourselves out of this mess this entire time and have stayed behind for me!”

Klaus rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Not exactly? I mean we had to figure out  _ how _ it worked exactly. Traveling to random and surprise points in history around the globe seemed like a bad idea and then we were fighting in Hue and then the whole thing with Vanya’s powers came up and we’ve had a very busy four months okay Dave!”

Dave pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut.

“So let me make sure I understand the situation. You and Vanya have a time machine, that you now know how to use, and you’re still not using it because... why exactly?”

Klaus gestured vaguely.

“Would you believe me if I said we were having a good time?”

Dave’s eyebrows had taken up residence somewhere near his hairline.

“A good time?”

“Yes? All things considered it’s not that bad compared to the week we were having before we got here.”

Dave closed his eyes, breathed heavily through his nose, looked up at the ceiling and then turned back to Klaus.

“I’m afraid to ask, but I have to know; what was the week before you arrived like?”

“Oh,” Klaus waved his hand as if batting away the memory of that week. “Daddy dearest finally kicked the bucket, Luther accused all of us of potentially murdering the old goat-fucker, Diego and Luther got into a fist fight at the funeral, Five showed up for the first time in seventeen years looking like he’s thirteen because apparently he got stuck in some post-Apocalypse future--I’m a little sketchy on the details-- and now he has a mannequin wife and some sort of grudge against a prosthetic lab, Luther then accused mom of killing the old goat-fucker and we had a vote on whether or not to turn her off, some crazy freaks in masks broke into the house and kidnapped me and Vanya, tortured us for a day until we were able to get out with the help of Diego’s cop friend--there is no way Diego was able to do that on his own--and then we accidently time warped into the Vietnam War.”

Dave was staring at Klaus in horrified fascination.

“I--I don’t...even know where to start with that babe. Turn your mom off? Your brother time traveled too? Mannequin wife? What the hell?” Dave sounded distraught and Klaus patted his arm in sympathy.

“Yeah it’s always a nasty shock for people to realize how fucked up my family is, but in order: our mom is a robot and we think her protection functions may be glitching so she didn’t save dad when he died, which: good for her honestly, our brother Five can teleport and wanted to try time traveling when we were thirteen and we never saw him again until forty-five minutes before dad’s funeral when he appeared in a huge blue vortex above the courtyard looking like he’s still thirteen--I don’t have an explanation for that one because he says he’s fifty-eight-- and when Luther and I went to go talk to him he was staking out this lab place in a van with a mannequin that he takes with him wherever he goes.”

Dave blinked.

“Your mom is a robot?”

“Yep!” Klaus popped his lips and began fidgeting with the edge of the sheets that were pooled around his waist.

“Huh,” Dave said again before pushing the sheets off and rummaging around for his pants.

“We should start getting or we’ll be late for lunch with your sister.” 

Klaus was actually taken aback.

“You’re not mad I didn’t tell you this before?”

Dave stopped searching for his shirt and turned to look at Klaus with a soft look of confusion on his face.

“Why would I be mad that you didn’t share an intensely private and painful secret until you were sure I could be trusted? You stayed behind in a warzone to offer to take me to the future. No one I’ve ever met would have done that for me Klaus; I’m not mad at you, I’m in love with you.”

Klaus felt like his stomach had suddenly filled with air.

“Oh,” he said faintly.

Dave looked at him with an expression so tender it made Klaus’s heart ache in his chest.

“You know that right? It’s not just about sex for me Klaus, and I don’t think its just about sex for you either, otherwise you wouldn’t have offered to stay behind with me. Offered to give up your whole life in the future to spend it here with me.”

Klaus snorted, trying to deflect from the fact that this was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said about him. 

“You haven’t seen my life from before, trust me the biggest thing I would be giving up Is my relatively new relationship with Vanya and the joined at the hip thing I had with Ben.”

Dave looked at Klaus sadly.

“Ben is your dead brother right?”

“Yeah, dead in body but still very much a constant presence in my life. Giving ghostly disapproval to all of my terrible life choices.” 

An unhappy look crossed Dave’s face. “Do you think he’d disapprove of me?”

“Are you kidding? He’d be thrilled I finally cared enough about someone else to try and take care of myself for their sake.”

Dave flinched at the implication of Klaus’s living situation in the future as well as his cavalier attitude towards his own well being. Suddenly he strode forward and grabbed both sides of Klaus’s face and kissed him deeply.

When Dave finally pulled back Klaus had to shake himself back into awareness.

“What was that for?” He asked breathlessly.

Dave smiled and leaned in to whisper into Klaus’s ear. “You deserve to be kissed often, and by someone who knows how.”

Klaus whimpered and pulled Dave in for another searing kiss.

“Does that make me Scarlett O’Hara? Cuz I would look fabulous in that red dress I’ll have you know.”

Dave only laughed and kissed him again.

In the end, they were only fifteen minutes late to their lunch date.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short update this time; it was longer and had a Dave POV but the pacing was off and it made more sense to have it as a separate chapter. I also wanted to thank every single person who left me comments, they really do mean the world to me. If you have questions or just want to keyboard smash I really do appreciate it. If you would like to follow me on Tumblr I am the-rainbow-spoon-incident2


	9. Click Our Heels Together Three Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave has two functioning disaster superhumans for friends, his life is weird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lord help me I'm back on my bullshit. Get's a bit angsty at the end but I do promise a happy ending. PLEASE!!! Leave comments and tell me what you all think because I wrote this about four times before I was happy with it.

**May 1968**

**Saigon, Vietnam**

**Dave**

 

Dave Katz considered himself a pretty down to earth kind of guy, all things considered. Maybe because he had grown up knowing he was a homosexual and had spent most of his life unable to tell people about it for fear of being, well _murdered_ quite frankly, and that sort of thing led to keeping a pretty low profile. He’d done okay in high school, almost completed his degree to become an engineer when he fell out of love with the subject and had been bouncing around for a new path when he got drafted. There were thousands of people like him and he could fit well into most crowds. Klaus and Vanya did not.

Dave’s best friend and his boyfriend were _Superpowered Time Travelers_ from fifty years in the future and had stolen a time machine from some assassins after escaping their torture session. How was this his life? But it was fine, he’d know from the moment he’d laid eye on Klaus that the other man would have baggage, and that was just going to be part of loving him, Dave had accepted that a while ago now.

Dave wasn’t the panicking sort, which was good because the idea that there were possible time traveling assassins looking for his friends was almost as frightening as the knowledge that those friends were deliberately staying behind in a war zone, at least partially, for his benefit.

The only comfort Dave could take in their decision to stay was that both of them seemed happier now than they had been when they arrived. Whatever lives they led in the future had damaged them, somehow more than a war zone did.

Klaus had gained both fat and muscle in the time he had soldied in the Valley, and under Vanya’s watchful eye he had decreased his drug usage from what it had been when he arrived.

The change in Vanya was even more obvious. She stood with her back straight and her shoulders thrown back and looked people in the eye when she spoke to them. She made jokes and laughed and argued and from what Klaus told him it was a complete departure from the behavior she had had her entire life. Dave remember how she had looked on the bus on the way to Hue, the distant look in her eyes as if she was stuck in a fog and couldn’t make details out properly. These days she was bright eyed with a mischievous smile and an easygoing manner; it was easy to see why Vanya had caught the photographer’s eye.

Josephine Montgomery was leanly muscled the way hikers and runners are, arms toned from hauling a heavy camera bag around with her as she walked the streets of Saigon. Her dark curly hair was piled on top of her head in an elegant twist and she was eyeing both Dave and Klaus up as if trying to get their measure. When she finally spoke her eyes her fixed on the joint Klaus had tucked behind his ear and a smile played at her lips.

“I never asked, where are you two from?”

Dave froze in fear but Vanya waved her hand dismissively at the question.

“A shitty social climbing town near the Canadian border that saw its prime ten years before we were born.”

Klaus snorted but said nothing to contradict his sister’s harsh breakdown of their hometown; there seemed to be no love lost from either of them when they talked about home, and neither of them seemed pressed for time to return to save it from the Apocalypse that according to their brother was less than a week away from when they’d left.

In fact Klaus had been pretty blasé when he talked about the potential end of all things as they were getting dressed for lunch.

“The old bastard did mention the apocalypse to me, come to think of it. He just left out the part about how soon. Figures he would tell Vanya more about it though, he always did like her best.”

Lunch was a pleasant affair, Jo (who was apparently under the impression that Vanya was a nurse in a field hospital farther north) had been coming to the tiny cafe for much of her time in Saigon and said their Cao lau was amazing and their Pho was better than any other she’d found in the city. Dave had little frame of reference when it came to Vietnamese food but both Klaus and Vanya had dug in like they were starving so Dave figured she was probably right. They chatted as they ate, mocking decisions made by congress back home, talked about music, and learned from Jo where to find the best market stalls in Saigon.

Klaus flitted around the stalls like on overeager child, rubbing fabric between his fingers, picking clothes up and holding them to his body to see how the colors looked on him.

Vanya was more restrained but she too was obviously having a good time, buying an overly large pair of sunglasses and some soap as they passed the time. Once they were done Jo offered to take them to another bar she frequented. A bar that was more disco than anything else but the drinks were flowing easily and the dance floor was so crowded that no one really noticed who was dancing with who.

Dave wasn’t sure what it said about him that the week of R&R he had in Saigon was the happiest week of his life but he was determined not to ask anyone’s opinion about it.

On their second to last day in Saigon Klaus announced over lunch that he had decided to get another tattoo, a Thai temple on his abdomen. Vanya didn’t even look up from the copy of Time magazine she had managed to get a hold of, Bobby Kennedy’s cartoon face staring at the Vietnam sky as she read.

“Oh that’s such a good idea Klaus, maybe next time you can get the bottom of your feet tattooed; it’s not like you’re ticklish or anything.”

Klaus hissed at his sister but Dave found himself giggling.

“Your feet are ticklish?”

Klaus sat down immediately with his legs crossed underneath him.

“No.”

Dave laughed so hard there were tears in the corners of his eyes. By the time his laughter has tapered off into hiccups Vanya is smiling smugly behind her magazine and Klaus has dramatically turned his back to both of them.

“This is oppression! I’m being oppressed it tell you! Oppressed!” Klaus waves his hands dramatically to an unseen audience and is quiet for about five seconds before he speaks again.

“Oh shut up Sammy! No one asked you.”

It takes five minutes for Dave and Vanya to stop laughing.

 

* * *

 

It’s when they’re leaving the tattoo parlor (Klaus’s temple tattoo is beautiful even if oddly placed) when Jo catches sight of them and come running up the street calling for Vanya, her camera swinging wildly from its strap around her neck.

“You will never guess what just happened to me,” Jo gushed as soon as she got within arms reach of Vanya, scooping the smaller woman in for a tight hug before beaming at all of them.

“You’re right, I’m a terrible guesser; what happened?” Vanya asked beaming at Jo, the tall woman’s good mood infectious.

“I got offered a posting in Da Nang to write for the Washington Courier! It’ll mostly be captions for my photos but there was a real interest in my articles so I have high hopes!”

Vanya’s answering smile was blinding.  

“That’s such great news! Congratulations Jo!”

“We should go out tonight!” Klaus chirped looking giddy and excited. “Our R&R is over tomorrow anyway, we should end it with a bang!”

The Saigon nightclub whirl was different than the one Dave knew from growing up in southern Florida, but no less enjoyable. They would occasionally run into people from their unit and would mingle for a while until they drifted off to join other drinking groups. Some of their fellow soldiers would try and flirt with Jo but the woman merely laughed and snapped a few pictures of them and shimmied away to dance with Vanya.

It was at some unspeakable early hour of the morning, too early for the sun to even to be peaking over the horizon when the four of them found themselves standing in front of the presidential palace, it’s columns lit by the spotlights anchored in the ground. Jo’s brow was furrowed and her lips pursed with a doleful expression as she looked at it.

“You can still see the damage from Tet,” she said in a tired voice. “You’ll probably always be able to see the damage from Tet actually. Maybe that’s good; this war has changed the people, why not be able to see it in the places as well?”

And then without saying anything she stepped back and snapped a picture of the three of them standing in front of the palace before continuing down the street.

When their night was over and the sun was finally rising the three of them said goodbye to Jo and Dave felt a brief flicker of grief for what could have been. Jo would make a great friend, a true friend that he could really be himself around, just like Klaus and just like Vanya, but she was very much tied to this place and time. She had a family that she spoke of often that she loved and missed and was looking forward to seeing again, a family that knew why she would never get married and loved her anyway. It was clear that Vanya liked her, but had no desire to pull her from this time.

Because that was the thing about Dave, he _did_ love his family, and he did miss them, but it had taken him less than fifteen seconds to decide that he was going to go with Klaus and Vanya when they were ready to go home and save the world from the Apocalypse. 

 

* * *

 

Going back to base in the A Shau Valley meant a return to their usual endless cycle of killing time waiting to be sent out again. Cleaning their weapons and playing cards and smoking, waiting to be sent to some miserable hill or other to take back from the NVA or being sent to a village where everyone was afraid of making the wrong move and setting the other off.

And that was how time passed for them for the most part, Klaus would tell him about growing up in the future and the thing he talked about made him wish he could kill Reginald Hargreeves himself for the shitty way he treated his children. Vanya talked about how the world had changed a lot and not at all at the same time, about how two men could get married if they wanted to no one would lock them up for loving each other, about how people like them were still attacked and the law wasn’t always enough to protect their rights. They both talked about their siblings; living dead and missing, about how they had all left in their own way after their family had fallen apart. They played cards and talked about music and how dumb fucking congress was and just like that it was late October before anything truly interesting happened and, big surprise to absolutely no one, there was a Hargreeves at the center of it.

At first, Dave had just thought the wind was picking up and someone had left the tent flap open trying to get some blessed relief from the ever present humidity, but then everything around him began to shake as if caught in the first tremors of an earthquake.

Dave lept out of his cot before Klaus was even sitting up carefully made his way to where Vanya was tossing fitfully in her sleep. Both she and Klaus had nightmares, hell most people here did too, and waking someone in the midst of a nightmare could be risky, doubly so if the person you were waking could throw you through the wall of the tent with only her mind. Dave had  through trial found that saying her name and holding her hand often woke her without startling her too badly, but even then he tried to keep out of her direct line of fire when waking her in case she was still incoherent from her dream.

It was a good thing he did, because Vanya didn’t wake with a gasp of unease, but a scream of fury and bolted upright, her eyes glowing white and her hands reaching for something in front of her.

That got everyone else’s attention, and everyone was looking at Dave and Vanya with mounting concern, Klaus standing barefoot a few feet behind Dave, his face stricken and gaunt.

Vanya was gasping for air, her entire chest heaving as she sucked in breaths of muggy air.

“She Rumored me,” Vanya breathed in a quietly furious voice as everyone else stared at her silently.

_What?_

“What are you talking about V?”

Klaus sounds more concerned than confused by the absolute nonsense that just came out of his sister’s mouth.

“Allison,” Vanya spits with mounting fury, her head whipping in Klaus’s direction, her eyes still that brilliant terrifying white they get when she lets her power wash over her like a tide.

Despite how frightening glowing eyes should look, Vanya hasn’t looked scary since that time Dave watched her kill a soldier with her rage, but her and now coming down from a nightmare she might be one of the most unnerving things Dave had ever seen.

“She Rumored me when we were kids. She looked at me and said ‘I heard a rumor that you think you’re just ordinary!’”

By the end of her sentence she’s screaming and everything is shaking and Vanya is throwing of her sheet and stomping out of the tent and heading for the woods on the western edge of their camp.

Good thing she sleeps with her boots on, is all Dave has time to think before Klaus is following after her without his boots.

_Oh hell._

By the time he and Klaus catch up with Vanya she had just slipped past the edge of the treeline facing away from them and she seems to be vibrating with anger.

“She did this to me,” Vanya says to the trees that surround her. Her voice is so full of pain that it makes Dave flinch.

“She knew this whole time that I had powers; she is the one who took them from me! Well, at least now it all makes sense. That’s why she never wanted me around!”

“Vanya,” Klaus started softly, but Vanya just keeps going.

“She couldn’t risk me threatening her place in the house, her--her dominance! She knew I was special and she treated me like _I_ was the biggest burden she’d ever had to shoulder. She--I can’t--just--AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

With a scream that made all the hair on the back of Dave’s neck stand on end Vanya sent out a wave of power directly into the ground making the very trees around them quiver. Like a puppet with its string cut Vanya falls to her knees and begins to cry.

Klaus lunges forward, wrapping his tiny sister in his arms and patting at her hair clumsily.

“Why?” Vanya wails into Klaus’s bare chest. “Why would she not tell me I had powers?! Does she really hate me that much?!”

Klaus looks shocked and upset and unsure of what to do, so they just sit there until Vanya has cried herself out and Klaus looks a little calmer.

“Are you sure she rumored you? It wasn’t just a nightmare?”

Vanya’s lip curled and she shook her head,

“No, if it was just a nightmare I’d have seen Allison is she is now, the one I saw was a child with mom, dad, and Pogo at her shoulders.”

Suddenly Vanya froze again.

“Pogo...he was there, he knew this whole time I had powers! Jesus, did everyone know but me and you?!”

“Are--are you sure Allison knew what was going on?” Klaus asks hesitantly, pulling back to look at Vanya carefully. “Because, if you were kids when it happened, and dad had you on pills, she would have thought you _were_ ordinary.”

“I--I don’t know. I don’t know Klaus, I don’t know if she meant to do it or not, but what if she did? What if she knew the whole time I was dosing myself with those horrible pills and she let me do it because she resented me so much?”

“Vanya,” Klaus whispers and they both sound so pained that all Dave can do is walk forward and hold them both in his arms as they shake with sobs.


	10. And Say 'There's No Place Like Home'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I should probably have split this into multiple chapters but I honestly can't look at this anymore without wanting to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I’ve had a few comments about historical accuracy and I have been trying to keep it as close to reality as I can. Public opinion on the war, military structure, major events, etc but The Umbrella Academy takes place in a universe that isn’t our own. In 2019 no one had cell phones, not even Hollywood actress Allison, and in the library there were no computers. In 1966 in our world American forces lost control of the A Shau Valley and never got it back, in TUA universe it serves as a base for Klaus’s unit the entire time he was there.   
> I am following TUA canon instead of history for this fic and the battle mentioned in this chapter are entirely a work of fiction and never took place in our world. That being said I did base them on soldiers’ accounts of jungle fighting so if that is upsetting to you please skip to the middle of this chapter.  
> As always please leave a comment even it its just a a keyboard smash.

**November 4th, 1968**

**A Shau Valley, Vietnam**

**Vanya**

 

Everyone was tense in the weeks that followed Vanya’s nightmare. Most of the men don’t know why exactly she was upset but they could literally see her pain, and seeing someone they cared for deeply so fragile was hard for all of them to bear. Murphy had taken to reading quietly with her in their downtime, telling her he was there for her if she needed company.

It was said so warmly and meant so kindly that it almost set her off crying in front of everyone. Part of her wondered how was it possible that after being so lonely for so long she had ended up with more friends than she had ever imagined having. 

Surrounded by people who cared about her well being and happiness, it was almost too much to stand to think that her own sister had been at least partly responsible for her ongoing misery. Not wholly, she knew this was Reginald’s puppet mastering of the situation, but that didn’t mean she was okay with Allison not telling her about what had happened, what had been taken from her, and what she had been reduced to as a result.

Was it fair to blame a child for obeying an abusive parent’s orders? No. Was it fair to expect the adult admit to the harm they caused as a child? In this case Vanya was going to say yes.

Klaus had been stunned by the realization that Allison had Rumored Vanya into forgetting she had ever had powers, and Vanya knows he’s hoping that she doesn’t realize what she’d done, that Reginald had lied to Allison just as much as the rest of them. 

And part of Vanya wants that too, but the fact of the matter is, they have no way of knowing what Allison knows until they can go home and ask her. They had already decided to wait for the end of Dave’s tour so he could go home to his family and say goodbye before they all went back to the shitshow that was 2019. Dave’s tour would be over in a few weeks anyway and then the three of them would be heading stateside to meet Dave’s family.

Dave had been asking Klaus and Vanya more about their siblings now that they were getting close to being ready to go home. They’d both been a little embarrassed to learn while they’d told Dave their siblings all had powers too they hadn’t mentioned what those powers were exactly.

“So your sister can make people do things or believe things by saying she heard a rumor?”

“Yes,” Vanya said, not looking up from where she was cleaning her rifle with such vigor the table was shaking.

“That sounds terrifying,” Dave said in his “Your family is fucked up but I don’t want to say that outright to your face” voice.

“Oh it is,” Vanya agreed with false cheer. “She lost custody of her daughter and at first I thought her ex was being a dick but upon reflection it was probably the right call. I certainly wouldn’t trust Allison to be around a child either, so...”

“Van,” Klaus started but Vanya but him off.

“How many times do you want to bet that she Rumored Claire into doing what she wanted? Or Patrick? She spent her whole life getting what she wanted when she wanted it because she could take away other people’s choices, and yeah sure our childhood was fucked up, but that doesn’t make it okay, and that doesn’t mean the rest of us should have to put up with it!”

And with an aggressive click she reassembled her rifle and stood up.

“I’m going to play my violin, I’ll see you guys later,” she called over her shoulder, her tone making it clear she didn’t want for them to follow.

Klaus made a move as if to follow her anyway but Murphy brushed past them with a shake of his head.

“I’ll go with Van, Klaus. It’ll be alright, she just needs to work through whatever’s bothering her.”

Murphy had been a rock since her episode, never demanded answers for her odd behavior, just laughed and said she was a temperamental musician and this was how she dealt with things and played his guitar with her in their downtime. 

But even he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. In the end it took a run in with the People’s army for Vanya to work through her anger issues.

 

 

**November 6th, 1968**

**A Shau Valley**

**Klaus**

 

Raine looks so damn tired when he tells them they are headed for Signal Hill to help assist E company, 52nd Infantry with a series of attacks from the west originating from around the Ho Chi Minh trail. The 1st Cavalry would be supplying air support by targeting the trail itself to help stem the flow.

In the age of the conquest of the Roman Empire Roman soldiers were terrified of forests. They considered them eerie and mysterious places where bad things happened to those who entered.

Klaus was starting to feel the same way about the jungles of Vietnam. They were filled with angry ghosts and soldiers defending their homes, and Klaus hadn’t ever really been one for violence. He had hated every minute of physical combat training he’d been forced into as a child and forgot most of it as soon as he could when he ran away helter-skelter at the age of seventeen.

Their true combat time in Vietnam had been pretty low, all things considered, spending most of their time scouting for Viet Cong influence in the villages near the Valley but every so often they were called upon to provide tactical assistance to another unit.

They had arrived near the base of the mountain, long before the sun went down, and had spent pretty much the entire time under constant bombardment from enemy fire. Five hours in and the  sun was almost completely behind the mountains and Klaus was giddy with adrenaline, a wide feral smile playing across his face even as explosions rock the trees nearby.

For brief flashes of time the sky is lit with unearthly red light, and Klaus found himself rocking with the force of a blast.

“Lock and load, Charlie’s away!”

Murphy takes aim next to Klaus and lets off a few rounds, shouting over his shoulder as he does so.

“Fire up those Claymores!”

Klaus pushed his helmet out of his eyes and looks at Dave and Vanya who are both holding absolutely still.

“Whew! Christ on a cracker, that was a close one, huh, Dave?”

“I’m out of ammo!” Williamson yelled from down the line.

Neither Dave nor Vanya move, they don’t even speak and Klaus could feel his stomach drop even as he reaches out to grab Dave’s shoulder.

“Dave?!”

Dave jolts when Klaus’s hand lands on his shoulder, and it is only now that Klaus can see the beam of white light emanating from his sister and holding a single round of ammunition aloft. The slug is only a few inches from Dave’s chest.

Somewhere down the line Klaus can hear someone yell “Wounded,” at the top of their lungs but Klaus can’t think about that right now. He can’t think about anything right now except for the fact that Dave had almost been shot, would have been shot if Vanya hadn’t caught it, would have died if Vanya hadn’t saved him. Klaus’s grip on Dave tightened even as he looked to where Vanya was hunkered down. Her eyes were glowing and she was vibrating with anger, and suddenly the bullet in front of her dropped like a stone and she closed her eyes in concentration.

_ Oh...boy. _

Suddenly underneath the rattle of gunfire and the whistling scream of rockets Klaus could hear a rumbling crunching snapping noise in the distance. Klaus’s eyes flicked to Dave and found that he too was looking at Vanya with mounting concern.

“Van,” Dave had to shout over the din around them but he still managed to sound soft as he tried to get her attention. “What are you--”

Dave never finished the sentence; with a scream of fury Vanya opened her eyes and Klaus could now see what his sister had done. Every incendiary device seemed to be going off at once, illuminating the jungle in front of them with a wave hellish red light, and the screams of those caught in the blasts rip through the night air, more terrible than the noises of the battle that had rather suddenly come to an end.

  
  


**November 7th, 1968**

**A Shau Valley, Vietnam**

**Dave**

 

Dave was trying very hard not to think about the fact that he had almost died during the last three weeks of his tour in Vietnam (which would have been some terrible sort of ironic joke right there) and found that the best distraction was to focus on the fact that Vanya had just single handedly wiped out almost half of the PAVN 325th Division.

As distractions go it was a pretty good one, Jones was all but bouncing on the balls of his feet with nervous energy as they surveyed the wreckage that remained of the opposition forces. Scattered here and there were some twisted bits of metal that looked almost like a rifle if you squinted and tattered scraps that might once have been a pack but it was hard to tell. Mostly it was just skeletons, blackened bone and charred twisted shapes.

Klaus had taken one looks at the destruction and popped two pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry.

In the end it was a pilot with the 1st Infantry that got credit for the concussive explosions that wiped out most of the opposition. He’d been flying back and had just enough daylight left to drop one more bomb and it had gone off at the same time as Vanya’s rage.

For a week after the battle they were asked to stay at the mountain base until permanent reinforcements could be sent; the valley had great strategic value and couldn’t be allowed to fall back into the hands of the North Vietnamese.

Vanya taken to keeping both Dave and Klaus within eyesight at all times, convinced something would happen if she wasn’t with them, and Klaus was so shaken by Dave’s near miss that he had spent much of the next week plastered to Dave’s side.

Raine had apparently decided long ago not to ask any questions when it came to the Hargreeves and didn’t comment beyond asking Dave if he knew they were going to be heading stateside with him when his tour was over.

“I think they imprinted on you,” Raine had said drinking his coffee like he wished it was alcohol. “Like baby ducks or something, really scary ducklings with violent impulses. Congratulations Katz, you survived Vietnam and got some probably the weirdest souvenir ever out of it.”

Dave had just smiled helplessly. 

“I only survived this long because of them. I can’t think of anything better to take with me from this place.”

Raine grunted in agreement.

“Part of me wonders how many men Klaus saved because of ghosts telling him what was hiding ahead of us, or where the bombs were planted. How much faster we won battles because of Van’s explosions. The rest of me isn’t sure it wants to ever know.”

Raine shook himself as if to dispel bad thoughts.

“I’ll miss them though, the weirdos. Take care of them Katz, lord knows those two can make terrible decisions when they don’t have supervision.”

 

 

**32,000 Feet Over The Pacific Ocean**

**November 29th, 1968**

**Dave**

 

After what feels simultaneously like no time at all and the longest wait ever, Dave’s tour of Vietnam was over; Dave found he had gained the love of his life, a new friend, more nightmares than he could shake a stick at, and the prospect of time travel.

It almost didn’t feel real, sitting squashed between Klaus and Vanya on the plane that would take him to California and from there to Atlanta where his sister Eve had already promised to drive him to Orlando to their parents’ house. The prospect of being trapped in a car with his most observant sister and the two people in the world he cared most about had Dave’s stomach in knots.

Eve did not approve of small talk and believed in breaking the ice by stomping on it. Personal and invasive questions were her favorite kind and Dave hadn’t told her much about Klaus beyond the fact that he existed until his last letter where he told them he would be coming home with a fellow soldier and his sister. Dave would feel bad about lying to his family and telling them Vanya was a reporter except Dave could think of no other excuse that wouldn’t be immediately sniffed out by his family.

“What are they like?” Vanya asked quietly as Klaus drooled onto Dave’s shoulder.

Vanya looked so strange in a dress uniform instead of her usual fatigues. In the bag under her seat were the clothes she planned to change into once they landed, the tiny figurine Dave had bought her during their R&R in Saigon, and the violin Murphy had given her during her first few weeks in country. Beneath Klaus’s seat was The Briefcase.

“My dad is really easygoing,” Dave answered quietly as he listens to Klaus snore softly next to his ear. “He loves to garden and finds model trains delightful.” Dave smiled as he continued. “A few years ago he found a puppy in his garden after a storm and he had already named it Spot and bought dog food before my mom was even back from Bridge club.”

“My mom is...a personality I guess you could say. She was ten when her parents left Poland after the First World War, but they kept in touch with their cousins and she never really got over losing most of them during the Forties. She only managed to sponsor one cousin and afterwards she couldn’t find anyone else.”

“That’s so sad,” Vanya was frowning, a little wrinkle forming between her brows.

Dave could only shrug helplessly with the one should Klaus wasn’t sleeping on.

“It made her almost aggressively proud of being Jewish. According to my sisters she never really bothered with keeping Kosher before the war, but after, after you couldn’t meet her for more than two minutes before she found a way to let you know she’s Jewish.”

“Good for her,” Vanya said with a small smile.

“Becca is the oldest and has two kids and loves tropical fish, Lena got a degree in art history before she had three girls and one boy six years later, Ruth always let’s people know she is the older twin not because she really cares, but because she knows it’s the most surefire way to get Eve’s blood pressure up.”

“Eve’s the professor right?”

“Uh-huh, teaches astronomy at Hudson University and bitches about the English department like she gets paid to do it.”

Vanya hummed sympathetically.

“It can be hard sharing a birthday with someone else, especially when you’re young.”

Dave snorted so loudly he almost woke Klaus, who muttered in his sleep and pressed his face more firmly into the crook of Dave’s neck.

“The twins don’t actually share a birthday; its a point Ruth loves to bring up whenever she can. Ruth was born on March 20th at 11:53 at night, and Eve wouldn’t turn the right way around and they didn’t want her to be breech so she wasn’t born until March 21st twenty-one minutes after midnight. Meaning that not only do the twins have different birthdays, they have different zodiac signs, which Ruth never lets anyone forget.”

Vanya chuckled quietly and leaned further into her seat trying to get comfortable.

“Eve’s they one driving down to pick us up from the airport right?”

“Yeah, she has a few days because of Thanksgiving break, and then she’ll head back to finish the semester and then fly down to spend the last bit of Hanukkah at mom and dad’s place.”

“It sounds nice,” and the way she says it is so wistful that Dave is hit again with the realization that these people he cares about so deeply had been so terribly neglected.

The Airport was crowded and noisy with holiday travelers and Dave couldn’t see his sister’s frizzy blonde curls anywhere in the teeming crowds.

Vanya caught both him and Klaus by the elbows and pulled them out of the flow of traffic.

“I’m going to change, if you find your sister tell her I’ll just be a few minutes.”

Eve was delayed for over two hours due to a multi vehicle accident further north and arrived chain smoking and in a towering temper.

“Honestly, it's like everyone forgets how to drive during the holidays,” she had started talking as soon as her eyes landed on him and continued as she pulled Dave in for a hug.

“They pack their suitcases and leave their brains at home, as if Atlanta drivers weren’t bad enough. How are you doing Dave?”

Dave couldn’t help but smile; his sister had mastered the art of kvetching before she could talk if dad was to be believed and she wouldn’t be her without a near constant stream of complaints coming from her mouth.

“Oh just fine,” he said with humor.

Eve stared at him expectantly for all of three seconds before she burst out an aggravated huff.

“ _ Well _ ...where are they Dave? You said you were bringing another soldier and a reporter home with you, like that wasn’t a shock to read in a letter, _ so _ ...”

She was actually tapping her foot, this was adorable.

“Hello beautiful,” Klaus called cheerfully from his perch on the windowsill and waved his ‘Hello’ tattoo at her.

Vanya snorted at his antics and hopped down to shake Eve’s hand.

“Hi, I’m Vanya, the disaster over there is Klaus; you must be Eve.”

Eve beamed at her.

“Hello Vanya! So nice to finally meet you! Dave has told me absolutely nothing about you so we must fix that right away, tell me everything about yourself! Don’t leave anything out!”

And with that she linked her arm through Vanya’s picked up her bag one handed and marched in the direction of short-term parking leaving Klaus and Dave standing in her wake.

Klaus stared at her with a look of bewildered confusion on his face.

“Does your sister think you’re dating  _ my _ sister?”

Dave shrugged.

“I guess?”

“But...but she’s a lesbian?”

Dave patted his shoulder.

“I know Klaus, let’s go before she decides to leave us here and we have to hitchhike to Orlando.”

  
  


**December 7th, 1968**

**Orlando Florida**

**Klaus**

 

Everyone in Dave’s family was wonderful. Sure, his sisters were nosy busybodies but they also brought waves of baked goods with them everytime they popped in and didn’t treat Klaus and Vanya like they were a massive hardship to be around which was still a novel enough experience for both him and Vanya that they didn’t really mind all the probing questions. 

It felt nice, like this was just a normal part of the experience of a family gathering for the holidays. Their family had never done that before; holidays weren’t really on the Reginald approved schedule for his child soldiers, and when they’d been older they weren’t exactly talking to each other.

Dave’s parents lived in a big house away from the hustle and bustle of the city and with the exception of Eve, all of Dave’s other sisters and their husbands lived nearby and would come by several times a week. Dave’s father was thrilled to have Vanya help him with all his plants and his mom loved to discuss fashion with Klaus over coffee in the mornings. Between the three sisters with children there were almost always tiny people running amok playing some game of pretend or other and Klaus had been delighted to learn that games of pretend were often loud enough to drown out most ghosts and Valium and pot made the rest manageable.

Klaus was a little surprised to realize he was going to miss this when he went back to the future. Not the drugs, but the loving family dynamic that the Katz household had a better handle on than any of the Hargreeves had ever managed.

 

 

**December 14th, 1968**

**Orlando Florida**

**Miriam Katz**

 

Miriam Eilenberg Katz (avid piano player, champion baker, book club queen) hadn’t lived to be sixty by being stupid, nor was she ignorant in her son’s choice of bed partners. Vanya was positively adorable and very sweet and would absolutely make a wonderful daughter-in-law, but it was obvious from the moment she and her brother stepped through the front door a few days before Thanksgiving (a holiday Miriam tolerated rather than enjoyed) that it was  _ Klaus _ that Dave was in love with.

Sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee in front of her Miriam sighed, wishing that her son felt comfortable enough to share this part of himself with her, but she’d been trying for years and he still wouldn’t even admit to liking men.

Miriam now also had to worry about Eve’s judgement skills if she thought Dave was romantically interested in Vanya. He joked and laughed with her and bumped her shoulder when they stood next to each other and treated her like a sister, or a beloved sister-in-law if you wanted to split hairs about it.

This Klaus seemed sweet enough, a little odd and high strung, but he had just returned from combat and that was enough to put anyone on edge, but from what Miriam had seen of the man he was utterly devoted to her son and that was all Miriam could ask for really. No, it wasn’t Klaus’s gender that upset her, it was the secrecy of it that bothered Miriam, the deception that her son felt was necessary.

More than that, Miriam could tell her son was holding something back, something more than his relationship with Klaus. The tree of them kept looking at each other like they were talking without words and it was starting to worry her.

The three of them had only been back for over two weeks now and her son was still dancing around whatever it was that was putting him on edge. Compared to her son, Klaus and Vanya were very relaxed, Klaus playing endless games of cards with her grandchildren and Vanya happily accepting requests for songs on the violin.

It didn’t help that her husband was convinced that Dave was just struggling to adjust to civilian life again after being in the army, while also trying to decide if he wanted to come out.

“It’s a big thing Miri, he’s probably nervous that we’ll be angry with him for being queer.”

“Jacob, I love you, but our son is terrible at keeping secrets. I can see it stuck in his mouth; if he keeps it there much longer he’s going to choke.”

“He’ll tell us about Klaus when he’s ready sweetheart, let him go at his own pace.”

Miriam stared at her husband flatly.

“We’ll have died of old age by then Jacob.”

Two weeks was more than enough time for Dave to tell her of his own accord, and it still hadn’t happened. Unable to put up with it any longer, Miriam poured two glasses of wine and pulled her son out onto the porch after dinner so they could finally have the talk Miriam had been waiting for since her son was sixteen years old.

“So when were you planning on telling me you’re in love with Klaus?” Miriam asked innocently as she sat on the swinging bench, a knitted shawl wrapped around her shoulders for warmth.

Dave’s mouth fell open and he stared at her open mouthed for a moment, snapped it shut, pinched the bridge of his nose, picked up the offered wine glass, downed the whole thing like shot and set it back down in under ten seconds.

“Honestly? I’m not sure if I was ever going to be able to work up to it.”

“Why not?”

Miriam watched as her son, her youngest child, her baby took in a shuddering breath.

“Because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to bear it if you hated me for it.”

Miriam felt like she had been splashed with icy water. Is that what her son had thought?

“Oh darling,” she whispered and reached out to gently lace their fingers together and pull him down next to her on the bench. “I’m sorry I gave you cause to think so little of me.”

Dave blinked and pulled back to look her in the eye.

“What?”

“I’ve known for a while sloneczko, about the boys, and I was waiting for you to tell me yourself, but you just...never did. Klaus seems like a sweet boy, and you seem happier around him than I can ever remember you being, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted for you darling, to be happy.”

Dave’s lower lip wobbled for a moment, then he reached out and pulled her into a hug.

“Thank you mama. I love you too. Thank you.”

They sat like that for a minute and Miriam carded her fingers through Dave’s curls until he pulled back to look her in the eye.

“I need to tell you something mama and it’s going to sound crazy, but I need you to believe me.”

_ HA! She knew it! She knew there was something else Dave was holding back! _

“Klaus and Vanya are from the future, and they need to go home, and I want to go with them.” 

If anyone else had said that to her she would have thought they were lying or crazy, but this was her baby and he wouldn’t do that to her, not about something like this. She would never in a thousand years have guessed that time travel was what had her son on edge.

“The...future?”

Dave rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.

“Yeah? I know it sounds crazy mama, but it’s true and they need to go home and I--” he broke off, his gaze falling to his lap here his hands had started fiddling with his wine glass.

“You want to go with them,” Miriam finished quietly.

Dave nodded, voice stuck in his throat.

“Will you--,” Miriam started breathlessly. “Will you wait until after Hanukkah?”

Dave nodded again, more vigorously this time.

“We wanted to wait until New Years Eve to go back.”

Miriam breathed a sigh of relief. Two weeks, she would have two weeks to say goodbye to her baby; that was more than her own mother had been given when her brother died. More than many women with sons in the army would get, and she would be safe in the knowledge that her son would be coming back...someday.

“How far in the future?” She asked hesitantly.

Dave blew out a breath and looked up at the sky.

“Fifty years, mama. I can live with him there if I want to, I can marry him even, and no one could stop me.”

Miriam sucked in a breath like she’d been punched.

“Promise me David, promise me you will have a Rabbi.”

Dave huffed a laugh that was watery with emotion. 

“I promise mama.”

Miriam clutched him as close to her body as she could. Two weeks, it would have to be enough.

 

 

**December 31st, 1968**

**Orlando Florida**

**Dave**

 

Even after he had told his mother everything Dave had decided not to tell his sisters that he was going to be time traveling fifty years into the future. They all had the bad habit of mercilessly criticizing every decision he had ever made in his life and he really didn’t feel like having this one picked apart by them. But his parents knew; his parents knew everything.

Dave had been surprised to learn that his parents had known for years that he was queer and had been waiting for him to say something at his own pace. He had been even more surprised by how well they were taking the whole time travel thing. When he finally said so to them over breakfast one morning his father had set down his paper and fixed him with a very serious look.

“Dave, you are a grown man. You have the right to make your own decisions, and of course we would love for the three of you to stay here but if what you say is true and the end of the world is coming in fifty years and Vanya and Klaus have to go back to help stop it and you are meant to go with them. We’re going to miss you, we’re going to be dead by the time you get to the future, but... you’re happy Dave. I’ve never seen you this happy and I can’t ask you to give that up. We don’t like it, but the least we can do is not make your decision harder.”

And so they all agreed not to tell the Katz sisters what was going on. All they knew was that Dave and Klaus and Vanya would be going on a trip for a while after New Years and they’d be out of touch for a little while. Jacob had promised to tell them the truth after the three of them were safely away.

 

* * *

 

If Dave had ever been asked what he thought a time machine would look like he wouldn’t have ever guessed that it would look like a briefcase. Maybe that was why whoever made it had picked that shape; it didn’t look like it should be special or important so it mostly got overlooked. Even in Vietnam where it made no sense to have a briefcase no one had ever questioned why Klaus and Vanya lugged the stupid thing around.

The Briefcase was sitting on the frigid grass of his parent’s backyard as they said their last goodbyes. Dave had never connected well with his parents, but the idea that he would b=never see them again hit him a lot harder than he had thought it would and he had hugged them more in the last hour than he had probably ever done in his life.

Vanya was sniffling a little and trying to pretend she wasn’t, a duffle stuffed with presents from his family slung over her shoulder as she waited for him to say goodbye.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Vanya asked as Dave squeezed his mother tightly one last time.

Dave looked to his parents, who had taken a step back and were holding hands, to Klaus who was fiddling with the strap of his own duffle and trying not to look nervous.

“I’m sure, I’ve been sure for a while. Let’s do this.”

The three of them huddled together under the starlit sky as Vanya check the dials one last time before they all looked up to Dave’s parents watching through watery eyes.

“We’ll take care of him! We promise!” Vanya called before she popped open the clasp, and with a gust of wind and the smell of ozone they were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...this chapter kind of took on a life of its own. I kept having to cut things out because it was just getting too long. I wanted to give a sense of time almost slipping by for Dave, who has already made his decision to jump to the future and is being confronted with the things he will be leaving behind. I wanted his family to be loving but also make it believable that he would give them up for Klaus and dear god that was hard to write. Also I am not Jewish and I tried really hard to avoid any negative stereotypes with Dave’s family but if I messed up please let me know!

**Author's Note:**

> Before writing this I didn't know much about the Vietnam war.  
> It was never really covered in my history lessons in school, I knew M.A.S.H. was set in Korea but really about Vietnam but I had no concrete understanding of the conflict itself. I knew it supposedly had something to do with preventing the spread of communism but I’d never really wondered how it had really started or ended until I decided to write this story. If you’re interested in understanding the lead up to the war I would suggest watching the first episode of the Ken Burns documentary. Its engaging and easy to follow and it doesn’t paint the U.S. or France as angels.


End file.
